The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

David Lean, Director

Drama, I’ve long told my students, is a shy bird in literary history. It has its brief seasons of breathtaking glory, as in ancient Athens during the age of the great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and as in Europe, especially England, during the late Renaissance, when you have a fellow named Shakespeare, so brilliant that we tend to u…