A film based on the book appeared in 1957. The film portrays a group of British captives in a Japanese POW camp forced to build a railway bridge. It was directed by David Lean, and stars Alec Guinness, William Holden, and Jack Hawkins. It was shot in Sri Lanka and England.
The story is based on a real event, the building in 1942 of a railway bridge in the Thai town of Kanchanaburi. This was part of a project to link existing Thai and Burmese railway lines to create a route from Bangkok, Thailand to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) to support the Japanese occupation of Burma. About a hundred thousand conscripted Asian labourers and 16,000 prisoners of war died on the whole project, which was nicknamed the Death Railway. The plot of the film is built around the destruction of the wooden bridge. In reality, a parallel steel bridge was added a few months after the wooden bridge was completed. Both were destroyed by the allies, the steel bridge first. The steel bridge has been repaired and is still in use.
The destruction of the bridge in the film was accomplished by blowing up a full-sized bridge as a real (unmanned) train drove over it - possibly the only time such a scene had been attempted without model shots since the silent era - see especially Buster Keaton's The General which includes an almost identical scene.
One memorable part of the movie is the tune which is whistled by the POW's—the "Colonel Bogey March"—which has become associated with the movie.
The film won seven Oscars: