Colonel Nicholson

No one's working.

We need to get them fucking Colonel Nicholson in this

movie.

It's all nepo babies and hookers.

Lean wasn't making life easy on his actors either.

He and Alec Guinness, as Colonel Nicholson, fought constantly over the character.

Guinness wanted to give Nicholson some humor and humanity, while Lean wanted him to play it way more rigidly.

Guinness became so unsure of the performance that Lean eventually screened footage for him and his family, and Guinness decided it might be the best work he had ever done.

Lean's relationship with William Holden as Shears was considerably warmer.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Alec Guinness, who is Colonel Nicholson.

So he feels he knows enough to write a compelling story about life in captivity.

His narrative centers on British officer Colonel Nicholson.

He was invented by Pierre based on an amalgamation of real men he met during the war.

Nicholson is a POW working on a bridge on the Burma Railway, who becomes so obsessed with completing the project that he overlooks the fact that the bridge will aid the enemy.

But when he reads The Bridge Over the River Kwai, he's disappointed.

The novel doesn't portray anywhere near the level of brutality that POWs actually endured.

What's worse, the character of Colonel Nicholson isn't just a misrepresentation of British captives, it's an insult to them.

No British officer ever collaborated with the enemy the way Nicholson does in the novel.