Originally Posted by christoph404

"Bridge on The River Kwai" I feel ,is an adventure war film inspired by real events. As a film it is well acted and entertaining and an impressive visual spectacle, I like it in the same way as I like "Where Eagles Dare" as a fantasy war adventure.
As a historical document?...well it isn't one, and bears no relation whtasoever to events surrounding the building of the bridge on the River Kwai. Survivors and veterns who were POWs and forced to work on the Kwai bridge have been very critical of the film. A man died for every yard of track through exhaustion or starvation or disease and the suffering was extreme. That is not really shown in the film, all the troops look very well fed when period photos show POWs looking like walking skeletons on the brink of death through disease and starvation. The Kwai bridge was not blown up by a team of commandos aided by an American, in fact it was not destroyed at all as far as I know, but William Holden's presence would have cerainly boosted box office in the US. There is certainly an argument to say that a fantasy adventure film based on an event that caused immense suffering should at least pay homage or acknowledge that reality in some way so although I like the film as a colourful entertainment part of me feels a little uncomfortable that David Lean seems to gloss over events and give it all a heroic self sacrificing ending where the bridge is destroyed which was far from reality. I can certainly understand why survivors would feel unhappy with Leans depiction of events so I would say as a depiction of real events the film actualy fails totaly but as an entertainment it succeeds.

Originally Posted by batman

The Czech film is Atentat ... I have seen some clips in a documentary about Heydrich but never the whole film.

Atentát (1964)