Led in great part by Mitch Miller's recording of "The River Kwai March/Colonel Bogey March," this soundtrack became part of the mass-consciousness of the 1950s and following decades. The infectious and defiant whistling of the British prisoners of war is only one aspect of the film, though, standing alongside a score by Malcolm Arnold that (although winning an Academy Award) became overshadowed by Miller's commercial success. Often wading in folly as much as doom, Arnold views the adversities and will of the POWs in a way akin to Mickey's battle with the brooms in Fantasia. "Shear's Escape" floats in the life-and-death realism of the situation yet seems to find the playfulness and romantic abandon of a walk through a forest. "Overture," in its simultaneously laborious and stirring tones, prefers the stark representation of menace and captivity, orchestral sections battling one another as they search for a means of escape yet, in the end, find they must submit. And standing among it all is K. Alford's "Colonel Bogey March," the whistling tribute to another Disney film score that has always seemed to alleviate even the worst days of drudgery at a cruel job. --James Stockstill
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