The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

  This is the second film from that Oscar winners collection I mentioned before. In 1957, this film won seven Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Lead Actor (Alec Guinness), Best Director (David Lean), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score, and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Sessue Hayakawa) but lost to Red Buttons for Sayanora.  I can't even be mad about that, since Buttons was fucking devastating in that part.

British prisoners of war, led by Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), are forced to build a bridge over the Kwai in order to link Burma and Siam by train.  Initially, Nicholson and the camp commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) disagree over the applicability of the Geneva Conventions with respect to the officer corps doing manual labor.  Eventually, Nicholson just decides to take over the bridge project as a way to show British ingenuity and superiority.  Veteran prisoner Shears (William Holden) manages to escape through the jungle to Ceylon, where he is most interested in pursuing Love, not War.  Major Warden (Jack Hawkins), a British Special Forces team lead, wants Shears to lead a small group back to the prison camp in order to destroy the bridge.  But Nicholson has become dangerously obsessed with his project, pushing his men to build the best possible bridge, heedless of the admonition to not aid or comfort the enemy.

This is what happens when you put Principle ahead of Practical. Principles are all well and good, especially if they are all that is left to you, but if they should start to come between you and rescue, it's time to re-evaluate your priorities.  The graveyards are full of the noble.