The directory «Plots»
Boulle Pierre Fransois Marie Louis
(1912—1994)
Pierre Boulle was a French novelist largely known for his combination of psychology and adventure most famously in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963).
Born in Avignon, France, he trained as an engineer. From 1936 to 1939 he worked as a technician on British rubber plantations in Malaya. At the outbreak of World War II Boulle enlisted with the French army in French Indochina, and after German troops occupied France he joined the Free French Mission in Singapore.
He served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma and French Indochina. In 1943 he was captured by the Vichy France loyalists on the Mekong River. While a prisoner, he was subjected to severe hardship and forced labour. He was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance.
For a while after the war, he returned to work in the rubber industry but moved back to Paris, where he began to write. Using his experiences in the war, he wrote Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï (1952; The Bridge on the River Kwai) which became a multi-million worldwide bestseller, winning the French "Prix Sainte-Beuve". The book was a semi-fictional story based on the real plight of Allied POWs forced to build a 415-km (258-mile) railway which became known as the "Death Railway" and passed over the bridge. 16,000 prisoners and 100,000 Asian conscripts died during construction of the line. His character of Lt-Col. Nicholson was not based on the real Allied senior officer at the Kwai bridges, Philip Toosey but was reportedly an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers.
David Lean made Boulle's story into a motion picture that won several 1957 Oscars, including the Best Picture, and Best Actor for Alec Guinness. Boulle himself won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay despite not having written the screenplay and not even speaking English. Boulle had been credited with the screenplay because the film's actual writers, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, had been blacklisted. The Motion Picture Academy added their names to the award in 1984.
In 1963, following several other reasonably successful novels, Pierre Boulle published his other famous novel, first published in France as La Planète des singes, and a year later in the United Kingdom in an English translation entitled Monkey Planet - later to be known as Planet of the Apes. In 1968 this story was made into an Oscar-winning film, starring Charlton Heston, which inspired a 2001 remake by Tim Burton. Pierre Boulle died in Paris, France on 30 January 1994.
Central African Republic, 1995, «Planet of the Apes»
Guinea, 2001, The Bridge on The River Kwai
Guinea, 2008, «Planet of the Apes», «Ben Hur»
Guinea, 2008, «Planet of the Apes»
Sao Tome e Principe, 2008, Films of Charlton Heston
Sao Tome e Principe, 2008, Films of Charlton Heston
Sierra Leone, 1991, «The Bridge on The River Kwai»
Umm al Quiwain, 1969, «The Bridge on The River Kwai»
