Goofs for
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: In the opening scene, the railway is 5'6" (1.676 m) broad gauge, as used in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the filming location; but when we see tracks on the finished bridge, they're much narrower, about 2' (60 cm).
  
  
• Errors in geography: Both scenes are wrong: the actual line would have been 1 metre gauge, as it connected existing Thai and Burmese metre-gauge routes.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Set in 1943, a 1946 Chrysler was shown as a military staff car.
  
  

• Factual errors: The movie credits have only one 'n' in Alec Guinness' name (this has been corrected in the "restored" version).
  
  
• Continuity: The demolition charges were only placed at water level around the bridge pilings but when the actual explosion takes place, small explosions can be seen right under the tracks, far above water level.
  
  
• Continuity: When Col. Nicholson is examining the wire sticking out of the river, the current switches direction.
  
  
• Continuity: At the very end of the movie the bridge is blown and the entire train falls into the shallow river Kwai but no engine or cars are visible under the bridge as the movie ends.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the very last shot of Major Clipton, you can see wind marks in the water from the helicopter pulling up to film the scene.
  
  
• Continuity: During the bridge completion celebration Nicholson gives a speech on the stage while Shears and Joyce are placing the explosive charges under cover of darkness. In some shots, the camp is visible in broad daylight beyond the left edge of the stage backdrop behind Nicholson.
  
  
• Continuity: When Shears leaves the village he is sent off in a boat with a driver. The next few scenes show him running out of supplies. But there is no driver, Shears is by himself.
  
  
• Continuity: When Col. Saito leaves Col. Nicholson and the other officers standing in the sun their shadows lengthen during the day. The scene then cuts to a view from inside the 'hospital' and the shadows of the officers are noticeably shorter.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): It wouldn't have been necessary for Joyce, the Canadian, to go to the UK to enlist to fight against the Japanese, as he says when being interviewed to join the commando group going back to the Kwai. Canada joined the war only a couple of days after war was declared by the British, and Joyce could easily have enlisted at home in Montreal.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Japanese army did not use American Willys-Overland jeeps yet we see one in the opening title sequence complete with Browning machine gun.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Japan was not a signatory of the Geneva Conventions until 1953, therefore there was no expectation by Allied prisoners of being treated in accordance with them. In fact, the Japanese treatment of prisoners let to the review and update of the conventions in 1949.
  
  
• Factual errors: Throughout the film the Japanese use British weapons: Enfield rifles, Sten submachine guns and Vickers (not Browning as stated elsewhere) machine guns.
  
  
• Factual errors: Towards the end of the movie before the bridge is blown up, the soldiers are seen marching across the bridge on their way to a new camp. From the long shot it is not clear that they are marching in step, but it is clear from the sound effects. It has been a widely used practice since 1850 that soldiers marching across bridges will break step so as not to cause any undue resonant stress on the bridge and may cause it to collapse. While this notion that a bridge will collapse is still under debate, it may be that the scene shot in the film proves the exception.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the mortar shell that kills Nicholson lands, you see Joyce flinch and then move, even though he is already dead.
  
  
• Continuity: The morning of the explosion, the sun rises upstream of the bridge. When Nicholson finds the exposed wire snagged on the sunken tree, he is squinting into the sun, upstream. All the rest of the action, including the snagged wire, occurs downstream.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: At the start of the movie, while the officer's and men are marching, they whistle. Unfortunately, while their whistling is meant to help keep them all in step, the music does not match their marching steps. In fact, had they been marching in step, their left foot would have been on the first and third beats of the song.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Saito tells Nicholson that he spent three years studying at London Polytechnic, which would presumably mean he would learn the British pronunciation of English words. But while he does refer to his own officer, Lt. Miura, as "Lef-tenant", he also complains that the bridge will not be completed on "schedule", using the American pronunciation, with an "sk" sound, instead of the British "sh" sound his education and experience in England should have led him to use.
  
  
• Factual errors: While the prisoners are all supposed to be sick and/or mistreated, in fact all look reasonably healthy and even tanned, and none in any kind of starved or emaciated state. In reality, as numerous photographs of actual prisoners of the Japanese show, all prisoners were uniformly emaciated, having lost an enormous amount of weight, starved, and with skeletal frames - conditions noticeably absent from any of the prisoners in the film.
  
  
• Factual errors: When criticizing Miura for the slow work on the bridge, Saito indicates a date in mid-May circled on his calendar as the date for its completion; and later on, Warden at his headquarters tells Shears that the Japanese aim is to complete the bridge by mid-May. Between these two events, however, Saito tells Nicholson that he has proclaimed a general amnesty in honor of the anniversary of Japan's victory over Russia in 1905, a reference to the naval Battle of Tsushima. However, that battle took place on May 27, 1905. Therefore, it could not have been the anniversary of that battle if the bridge was still due to be completed by mid-May - and in fact, it is completed on schedule.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In the scene when a Burmese women spreads a masking paint on major Shears legs, before they are to set charges onto a bridge, it's clearly seen that William Holden is wearing 50's style loafers, that not only fit the time, but don't fit the situation at all.
  
  

• Factual errors: SPOILER: When Nicholson falls on the dynamite plunger, the charges on the bridge are set off several seconds apart. Being on a single wire, with a single plunger, both charges should have gone off at the same time. Two separate charges would require two separate plungers (and two separate wires).
  
  

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