Real and celluloid Bridge on the River Kwai

NALAKA GUNAWARDENE and VINDANA ARIYAWANSA

The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film that was directed by David Lean and starred William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa. It won seven Academy awards including those for best director, best actor (for Guinness) and best motion picture. It is one of the best known films to have used Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, as location. 

Wiz Quiz today starts off with questions saluting this memorable film and its story.

1. The film The Bridge on the River Kwai is a work of fiction but was historically accurate, as it was based on the construction of the Burma Railway between 1942 and 1943 by the Japanese Army using prisoners of war. The film was adapted from a novel written by a French writer who himself had been a prisoner of war in Southeast Asia during World War II. Who was he?

2. The largely fictitious plot in The Bridge on the River Kwai is based on the building of a railway bridge over the river Mae Klong, renamed as Khwae Yai in the 1960s, at a place called Tha Ma Kham, five kilometres from the Thai town of Kanchanaburi. The historical backdrop to this was the Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway, that the Imperial Japanese Army built between 1942 and 1943 using forced labour of captured prisoners of war and local people. The real life construction used about 100,000 conscripted labourers, of whom an estimated 13,000 died on the project and were buried along the railway. Which two Southeast Asian cities were linked by this 415 kilometre (258 mile) long railway?

3. The Bridge on the River Kwai film was an international co-production between companies in the Britain and the United States. The story is set in Thailand, but was filmed on location mostly in Sri Lanka, with a few scenes shot in England. Locations where scenes were filmed included Ambepussa, Colombo, Kandy, Mahara, the Mount Lavinia Hotel and the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens. But where in Sri Lanka were most scenes filmed, which included a complete railway bridge that was built and then blown up?

4. In late August 2011, Apple Corporation’s co-founder Steven Paul (Steve) Jobs announced that he was stepping down as the chief executive officer of the company. He is universally acknowledged as the creative and enterprising genius who made Apple the most valuable technology company in the world. Jobs has become chairman of the Apple Board of Directors, a position that did not exist before. Whom did Apple name as its new chief operating officer?

5. June 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times. The dossier was a top secret history of the US actions in the Vietnam War, which was leaked to the newspaper by a military analyst. It revealed greater involvement in Vietnam than was known before. The Nixon Administration tried to halt the publication but the US Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling decided 6 to 3 in favour of the newspaper, thus upholding the public’s right to know.

Later efforts by the White House to discredit the source of the leak also backfired, and ultimately led to the notorious Watergate scandal. Who was responsible for this leak, one of the best known in the history of journalism? (The dossier was declassified and officially made public in June 2011.)

6. Name the 19th Century American writer who gave this advice to all his readers: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the thing that you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore... Dream... Discover...”

7. An illustrious Ceylonese cricketer of the 20th Century died on August 1, 2011 in Australia, aged 80. He was a gifted all-rounder who was a right-handed batsman and legbreak or googly bowler. He played first class cricket from 1949 to 1968, representing 14 different teams during that period. He played for Cambridge University in the UK between 1954 and 1957 and in 1957, became the first Asian to captain the Cambridge team. He played for Nottinghamshire for 11 years and for New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield when he was employed with the Ceylon Tea Board in Australia. Following his retirement from competitive cricket, he was Sri Lanka’s representative at the ICC and later managed the Test side on a tour of India in 1982. He also worked as a Test match commentator before retiring in 2004 and settling down in Australia. Who was he?

8. The Gratiaen Prize is awarded annually to the best work of literary writing in English by a resident Sri Lankan. It was instituted by author Michael Ondaatje in 1992 with the money he received as joint-winner of the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient, Why is the Prize, intended to encourage English writing by Sri Lankans, so named?

9. The Gratiaen Prize for 2010 was awarded to a collection of poems titled On the Streets & other Revelations. Who was its woman author?

10. When the Indian Ocean Tsunami struck South and Southeast Asian countries on 26 December 2004, a British school girl who was vacationing on Maikhao Beach in Thailand recognised the tell-tale signs of the oncoming tsunami and managed to save many lives by sounding the alarm for immediate beach evacuation.

Over 230,000 people along the Indian Ocean rim were not so lucky and were killed by the fierce waves. Who was this girl, aged only 11 at the time, who was later felicitated for her timely action?

11. The Stockholm Water Prize is a global award founded in 1991 and presented annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute to an individual, organisation or institution for outstanding water-related activities. The Stockholm Water Prize Laureate receives USD 150,000 and a crystal sculpture. In late August 2011, an America Professor of Zoology and Limnology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, received the 2011 Stockholm Water Prize for his groundbreaking research that showed how lake ecosystems are affected by the surrounding landscape and human activities. Who was he?

12. While whales and dolphins are not fish but mammals, an important distinction, some larger fish species can grow to the same giant size as whales.

The largest living fish species is a slow-moving creature that engages in filter feeding just like whales do: they feed by straining suspended matter and food particles from water.

The largest recorded individual was 12.6 metres (41.5 ft) in length and the heaviest has weighed more than 36 tons.

What is the common name given to this fish species, found in tropical and warm oceans, and lives in the open sea with a lifespan of about 70 years?

13. Yuri Gagarin’s flight proved that humans could indeed endure the rigours of lift-off and re-entry, as well as the weightlessness and emotional challenges involved in space travel.

Until then, some scientists doubted if humans could survive space travel. Perhaps the best known dismissal of space travel were the words uttered by Britain’s then Astronomer Royal, who said in 1956, in response to a journalist’s questions about flying saucers and trips to the Moon: “All this writing about space travel is utter bilge! To go to the Moon would cost as much as a major war.” Who said this? (He was proved wrong within a year, and lived to see men walk on the Moon!)

14. Lester James Peries has written how, when he was filming Rekava (1956), he and crew were waiting for rain to complete one last scene that involved rain, in fact, a tropical storm.

A well known British film director was in Sri Lanka at the time, and showed Lester how to create rain artificially with the help of the fire brigade and even lent his art director for assistance. Who was this British film director?

15. The Seventh Rugby World Cup will be starting on September 9, 2011 in New Zealand, where 20 national teams from around the world will be playing for the coveted Webb Ellis trophy.

The New Zealand Rugby team routinely performs an indigenous Maori war dance before the start of any game they play. It is believed to boost their own morale and perhaps intimidate the opposition! What is this war dance known as? It has been used by Kiwi teams for a little over a century.

Answers will be published next week

Last week’s answers

1. Jiaolong

2. Jacques Piccard (son of Prof Auguste Piccard) and Don Walsh

3. James Cameron (for Avatar II)

4. Uz Fathimath Dhiyana Saeed

5. Mahatma Gandhi

6. Michael Crichton (1942 – 2008)

7. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930), best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes

8. The Prospect of Immortality

9. Then UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown

10. Naim Suleymanoglu (formerly known as Naim Suleimanov)

11. Copernicium

12. German East Africa

13. Mata Hari

14. China

15. Matir Moina (The Clay Bird)