Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Overview… military man. With 28 years of service in the British army, Nicholson is the leader of a platoon captured and shipped to a Japanese POW camp in the Burmese jungle. Colonel Saito, director of the camp, assigns all prisoners to build a bridge spanning the River Kwai. Nicholson balks; Article 27 of the Geneva Convention forbids the use of officers for manual labor. And so he finds himself locked in an epic battle of wills with Saito.
Personality… dignified, stubborn, and dispassionate. Nicholson acts not according to his emotions but according to his principles and to official protocol. He declares, “Without law, there is no civilization.” His commitment to upholding the dignity of King and Country is absolute, and to waver even slightly from that commitment would be a cardinal sin.
Get to Know him in...
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The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson , the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
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French story about the construction of a bridge by British prisoners of war in the Siamese jungle and what comes of it.
