The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) v. Vertigo (1958) v. The Hangover (2009) Tiebreaker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBVjPKUq9KY

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Original Episode - #37 (October 14th, 2020)

Vertigo (1958) Original Episode - #166 (June 7th, 2023)

The Hangover (2009) Original Episode - #213 (June 5, 2024)

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) v. Vertigo (1958) v. The Hangover (2009) Tiebreaker - #207 (May 27th, 2026)

The Bridge on the River Kwai Cast:

• David Lean, Director

• Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, Writers

• Jack Hilyard, Cinematography

• Peter Taylor, Editing

• Malcolm Arnold, Music

• William Holden as "Commander" Shears

• Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson

• Jack Hawkins as Major Warden

• Sessue Hayakawa as Colonel Saito

• James Donald as Major Clipton

• Geoffrey Horne as Lieutenant Joyce

• André Morell as Colonel Green

• Peter Williams as Captain Reeves

• John Boxer as Major Hughes

The Bridge on the River Kwai Recognition:

• The Bridge on the River Kwai was released on December 14, 1957.

• On a budget between $2.4-2.8 million, the film would gross roughly $30.6 million to finish as the #1 film of 1957.

• Critics were effusive in their praise for the film at the time and The Bridge on the River Kwai would go on to be nominated for 8 Oscars that year including Sessue Hayakawa as Best Supporting Actor while winning Best Picture, Director (Lean), Actor (Guinness), Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, and Original Score.

• In 1997, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

• In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Bridge on the River Kwai the 11th greatest British film of the 20th century.

• The film has been recognized by the AFI on the following lists:

  • 1998 — AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies — No. 13

  • 2001 — AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills — No. 58

  • 2006 — AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers — No. 14

  • 2007 — AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) — No. 36

• The Bridge on the River Kwai currently holds a 96% among critics on RT, an 88 score on Metacritic, and a 4.2/5 on Letterboxd.

The Bridge on the River Kwai Plot Summary: In The Bridge on the River Kwai, a British colonel (Alec Guinness) and his regiment are marched into a Japanese POW camp deep in the Burmese jungle, where the suffocating heat, rigid military pride, and the demands of their captors collide. As the Japanese command insists the prisoners build a strategic bridge across the River Kwai, a quiet but mounting tension takes hold—between duty and defiance, honor and obsession, survival and the slow erosion of self. The film unfolds as an atmospheric study of men locked in a battle of wills, each convinced he’s serving a greater purpose, even as the jungle hums with the sense that something far larger is closing in.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) - The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 9.25

Impact/Significance: 9.5

Novelty: 7.75

Classic-ness: 6.5

Rewatchability: 5.25

Audience Score: 9.3

Total: 47.55

Vertigo Cast:

• Alfred Hitchcock, Director

• Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, Writers

• Robert Burks, Cinematography

• Bernard Herman, Music

• George Tomasini, Editing

• James Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson

• Kim Novak as Judy Barton / Madeleine Elster

• Tom Helmore as Gavin Elster

• Barbara Bel Geddes as Marjorie "Midge" Wood

• Henry Jones as the coroner

• Raymond Bailey as Scottie's doctor

• Ellen Corby as the manager of the McKittrick Hotel

• Konstantin Shayne as bookstore owner Pop Leibel

Vertigo Recognition:

• Loosely based on D'entre les morts, a 1954 novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, Vertigo was released on May 9, 1958.

• While Vertigo did break even upon its original release, it earned significantly less than other Hitchcock productions, and finished an estimated 13th among top grossing films in 1958.

• Adding to the comparatively low box office numbers were the mixed to poor reviews at the time with many critics singling out the pacing and structure of the story as well as Hitchcock's departure from the romantic thrillers he had become known for.

• In an interview with François Truffaut, Hitchcock stated that Vertigo was one of his favourite films, with some reservations. Hitchcock blamed the film's failure on the 49-year-old Stewart looking too old to play a convincing love interest for the 24-year-old Kim Novak.

• Over time, the film has been re-evaluated by film critics and has moved higher in esteem in most critics' opinions. Every ten years since 1952, the British Film Institute's film magazine, Sight & Sound, has asked the world's leading film critics to compile a list of the 10 greatest films of all time. In the 1962 and 1972 polls, Vertigo was not among the top 10 films in voting. Only in 1982 did Vertigo enter the list, and then in 7th place. By 1992, it had advanced to 4th place, by 2002 to 2nd, and in 2012 to 1st place in both the crime genre, and overall, ahead of Citizen Kane in 2nd place; in 2022, the Sight & Sound poll ranked Vertigo 2nd place. In the 2012 Sight & Sound director's poll of the greatest films ever made Vertigo was ranked 7th. In the earlier 2002 version of the list the film ranked 6th among directors. In the 2022 edition of the list, the film ranked 6th in the director's poll.

• In 1998, Time Out conducted a poll and Vertigo was voted the 5th greatest film of all time.

• The Village Voice ranked Vertigo at No. 3 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999.

• Entertainment Weekly voted it the 19th Greatest film of all time in 1999.

• In January 2002, the film was voted at No. 96 on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics.

• In 2009, the film was ranked at No. 10 on Japanese film magazine Kinema Junpo's Top 10 Non-Japanese Films of All Time list.

• In 2022, Time Out magazine ranked the film at No.15 on their list of "The 100 best thriller films of all time".

• In 1989, Vertigo was selected by the United States Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry in the first year of the registry's voting.

• The American Film Institute has recognized the film on the following lists:

  • AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (1998) #61

  • AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills (2001) #18

  • AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions (2002) #18

  • AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores (2005) #12

  • AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007) #9

  • AFI's 10 Top 10 (2008) #1 Mystery

• Vertigo currently holds a 92% among critics on RT, a 100 score on Metacritic, and a 4.2 out of 5 on Letterboxd.

Vertigo Plot Summary: In Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo," James Stewart stars as Scottie Ferguson, a former detective burdened by his fear of heights, a phobia that gradually becomes a metaphor for the vertiginous nature of desire itself.

When Scottie is enlisted by an old acquaintance, Gavin Elster, to investigate his wife's peculiar behavior, the stage is set for a tale of passion and deception. Kim Novak, a vision of ethereal beauty, portrays Madeleine, the object of Scottie's infatuation. As Scottie becomes entangled in a torrid affair, the film takes a dark and unexpected turn. The boundaries between truth and illusion blur, leaving both the protagonist and the audience teetering on the edge of a precipice.

Vertigo (1958) - The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 8.25

Impact/Significance: 5.75

Novelty: 9.5

Classic-ness: 8.25

Rewatchability: 7

Audience Score: 8.8 (83% Google, 93% RT)

Total: 47.55

The Hangover Cast:

• Todd Phillips, Director

• Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, Writers

• Lawrence Sher, Cinematography

• Debra Neil-Fisher, Editing

• Christophe Beck, Music

• Bradley Cooper as Phil

• Ed Helms as Stu

• Zach Galifianakis as Alan

• Justin Bartha as Doug

• Heather Graham as Jade

• Sasha Barrese as Tracy

• Jeffrey Tambor as Sid

• Ken Jeong as Mr. Chow

• Rachael Harris as Melissa

• Mike Tyson as himself

• Mike Epps as Black Doug

• Matt Walsh as Dr. Valsh

• Rob Riggle as Officer Franklin

• Cleo King as Officer Garden

• Bryan Callen as Eddie

The Hangover Recognition:

• The Hangover was wide released on June 5, 2009.

• On a budget of $35 million, the film would go on to gross $469.3 million worldwide and become the #6 grossing film in the US in 2009. It was also the highest grossing R-rated comedy until Deadpool (2016).

• Out of all R-rated films, it is the sixth-highest-grossing ever in the United States, behind The Passion of the Christ, Deadpool, American Sniper, It and The Matrix Reloaded.

• The film was mildly popular among the critics with some outright panning it, but it would go on to be included in the AFI's Top 10 films of 2009, receive numerous nominations among critics circles and awards circuits for its editing, screenplay, and for Best Comedy of the year.

• The film's impact was also felt in several other places. It was reported in 2013 that as of that year, guests were still continuing to quote to Caesars staff two lines from the film's check-in scene: "Did Caesar live here?" and "Do you know if the hotel is pager-friendly?" As a result of the film, Hangover-themed slot machines became popular at casinos throughout the Las Vegas Valley, the Caesars Palace gift shop sold tens of thousands of Hangover-related souvenirs, and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority received numerous inquiries from persons interested in recreating some of the film's most wild scenes, such as those involving a tiger.

• The Las Vegas branch of Madame Tussauds added Hangover-themed rooms recreating the hotel room and the wedding chapel and a tie-in rooftop cocktail bar, and in 2018, Hasbro issued a parody version of their board game Clue where players have to locate a missing friend somewhere in the city after a wild night of carousing.

• The film's success would spark two sequels in 2011 and 2013 as well.

• The Hangover currently holds a 79% among critics on RT, a 73 score on Metacritic, and a 3.7/5 on Letterboxd.

The Hangover Plot Summary: The Hangover is a raucous comedy that transforms a bachelor party into a riotous odyssey of misadventures. The film opens with four friends heading to Las Vegas for a night of celebration, only to wake up the next morning with no memory of the previous night's events. What follows is a frenetic quest to piece together their fragmented memories and locate their missing groom.

The Hangover (2009) - The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 8.5

Impact/Significance: 9.25

Novelty: 7.75

Classic-ness: 7.25

Rewatchability: 6.25

Audience Score: 8.55 (87% Google, 84% RT)

Total: 47.55

Stanley Rubric Tiebreaker:

Legacy Rankings:

1. Vertigo (1958)

2. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

3. The Hangover (2009)

Impact/Significance Rankings:

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

2. The Hangover (2009)

3. Vertigo (1958)

Novelty Rankings:

1. Vertigo (1958)

2. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

3. The Hangover (2009)

Classicness Rankings:

1. Vertigo (1958)

2. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

3. The Hangover (2009)

Rewatchability Rankings:

1. The Hangover (2009)

2. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

3. Vertigo (1958)

Audience Score Rankings:

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) - 8.95 (93% RT, 86% Google)

2. Vertigo (1958) - 8.75 (92% RT, 83% Google)

3. The Hangover (2009) - 8.5 (84% RT, 86% Google)

Final Tiebreaker Rankings:

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

2. Vertigo (1958)

3. The Hangover (2009)

In Memoriam:

• Tom Kane, 64, American voice actor (The Powerpuff Girls, Star Wars, The Wild Thornberrys)

• Barry W. Blaustein, 71, American screenwriter (Coming to America, The Nutty Professor) and film director (Beyond the Mat)