Rush 6: The Brit Shot

In a scene occurring an hour and eight minutes into, "Bridge on the River Kwai," we see four British officers traveling across the River Kwai via ferry. The shot is a long shot, uninterrupted by cuts. The camera is fixed on the ferry and the officers, meaning all dynamicism in the shot is provided by the  background: the River Kwai itself, and British soldiers jumping, playing, splashing, and possibly working in the water around the bridge.

The scene is ultimately a comic one. The assertion by the uptight officers that good British values will construct a bridge is contrasted by the care-free cavorting of the troops behind them. This ironic juxtaposition is further highlighted by the difference between the solid foreground of the four British officers, and the wild background of the jungle and splashing troops. If tragedy is a story of clashing values (family versus country, etc), then this scene is not yet tragic. We see officers who are oblivious to the world around them, assuming that their values will readily supplant the ones ignored behind them.

In terms of impacting the historical audience for the film, 1960s America (not the diagetic context of the film, WWII), there is the connotation of the war in Vietnam, but there is also the question of the emergence of Japan as an industrial power post WWII. The logic of the film up to this point, and this scene in particular, posits that the Japanese were incompetent when it came to the quality control and rigor needed for modern manufacturing (they created the environment of chaos personified by the jungle and revelrous British soldiers), and that it was the influence of the western world which would provide the stability and eye for detail which ultimately enabled success.

Rush 5: The Non-Diegetic Soliloquy and the Performer's Relationship to the Audience

Chief among the pantheon of techniques of artifice which signal that we are in the realm of the theatrical is the soliloquy. Outside of the theater, speaking one's thoughts aloud is generally considered to be a sign of flagging mental well being; to talk to oneself is a sign of agitation or altered social mores. Yet this speaking aloud otherwise private thoughts is extraordinarily present in our theatrical tradition.

Though the Greek tragedy, "Antigone" does not have the same soliloquy's of "Hamlet," or "Oedipus Rex" it is replete with long didactic speeches and a chorus who speaks to the audience in very plain terms about the stakes and themes of the play. These theatrical methods of direct addressed survived and evolved for thousands of years. But how has direct address translated to film, a theatrical medium wherein the actor is nowhere near the audience being directly addressed? One example to consider is Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Hamlet. Hamlet's first soliloquy (Act 1 Scene 2 "O that this too too solid flesh would melt [...]") is spoken partially aloud, and partially as non-diagetic narration heard by the audience, but not spoken by the actor on screen. During the long stretches of non-diegetic soliloquy, we the audience are left only to contemplate Olivier's facial expressions.

If we are to naively speculate on reasons why Olivier may have chosen the non-diegetic or intra-diaegetic over-narration  for this section of the film, we can consider many possibilities:

• The prevalence of psychology and notions of the subconscious in the 20th century made the idea of an "internal monologue" a compelling one for audiences, and something which could be explored more easily using recorded sound on film than in spoken theater
• Silence and suffering are interesting correlatives which are not explored very effectively in theatrical tragedy: What is a Hamlet like when he bemoans less loudly and more internally?
• The relationship between the audience and the actor is fundamentally changed when a play is filmed versus when a play is performed. Would Olivier's soliloquy be somehow 'worse' if it was performed as though for stage? 
• Audiences themselves changed: Suppose that the long speeches of 'Antigone' seemed naturalistic or realistic to Greek audiences? We can easily imagine that people spoke in a longer, more considered way in ancient Greece than they do today; or in 1948. This presentation of the soliloquy as internal could seem equally 'real' to the 1948 audience as the wholly spoken soliloquy did to Hamlet's original audience.