20 Films From The 1950s That Everybody Should Watch

4. The Bridge On The River Kwai

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, cinemas were awash with military-oriented films, most of them depicting some amount of heroic, explosive action. However, not all of them were all that successful in showing the real, gritty side of warfare. The Bridge On The River Kwai depicts a fictionalised account of the building of the Burma Railway by British prisoners, focusing especially on the harsh, dehumanising conditions that the captured soldiers were kept in. In stark contrast to his role in The Ladykillers, Alex Guinness plays Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, the Senior British Officer in the camp who refuses to cooperate with his captors. It's a brutal, near-humourless role, but one that defined his career (that's right, Obi-Wan wasn't his defining role). Despite on-set tensions between cast and crew, and horrific filming conditions only befitting of the Sri Lankan sun, The Bridge On The River Kwai revitalised the war genre by turning it firmly on its head.