Customer Reviews

The Bridge On The River Kwai: An Original Soundtrack Recording

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I saw this film a couple weeks ago, and I thought the music was just wonderful. I saw that the library had the 1989 Varese Sarabande copy, and when I got it I listened to it over and over again. I don't know how long this cd is, but mine was only 34 minutes long, because I only had the nine tracks, which was all I needed. The other three tracks look like they just have re-recordings of the Colonel Bogey march. But I'm sure it will please the next person who buys this soundtrack. This is just a beautiful soundtrack, I suggest anyone to buy it and put it with their other soundtracks from David Lean's films.

A remastering of one the treasured albums of my youth.

Among the pluses: The original album featured the Mitch Miller arrangement of Colonel Bogey, whistled professionally, with the River Kwai March countermelody brought in by discrete steps verse by verse, then taken out the same regular way. In the new print, that is pushed to the end, and the version from the sound track restored. A wonderfully raggedy whistling of Colonel Bogey, with the River Kwai March swelling and overwhelming the whistling as the camera focuses on Nicholson's pride in his regiment, cut off when the camera shows Saito watching.

Among the minuses: Despite the claims of remastering the actual film music, the dynamics are substantially more limited than I remember from the theatrical presentation. Example: The scene "Nicholson's victory," in addition to standing on end every hair you possess, lifts you 4 inches off your seat, despite all the messages from your rational mind that the victory is completely nuts. A big part of that in the theater was the *explosion* of sound from the orchestra breaking into the introduction of the River Kwai March, as Nicholson's regiment break ranks to lift him to their shoulders. On the new CD, however, the loudness of that explosion is not something you'd remark if you didn't know what to expect.