...general dogsbody at Gainsborough studios. This was in 1927, so Lean witnessed at first hand the arrival of talking pictures. He minutely observed how films were made (Anthony Asquith was one of the directors he studied) and quickly realised the importance of editing and how ability in that direction might lead to direction.

By 1930 he had left Gainsborough to become assistant editor of British Movietone News, then its editor, and in 1934 he joined Paramount-British where he cut 'quota quickies'. Lean's talents were recognized by the Hungarian emigre director Paul Czinner who invited lean to cut Escape Me Never (1935). This success led to further prestigious assignments - Asquith's Pygmalion (1938), Gabriel Pascal's Major Barbara (1941), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's One of our Aircraft Is Missing (1941) among them - which earned lean respect within the industry and a range of technical experience that was to form the backbone of his work as a director.

one of our aircraft is missing
(1941)

Utterly English

Lean's next big break came from Noel Coward who wanted someone to help him direct In Which We Serve (1942), which Coward had written and would star in. Coward sought Britain's most skilful editor and Lean found himself directing virtually the entire film since Coward apparently soon tired of the chore. Coward acted as producer and screenwriter in three further collaborations with Lean. This Happy Breed (1944) gave Lean his first solo director's credit and Blithe Spirit (1945) allowed him to experiment with comedy; but it was the third, Brief Encounter, that enabled Lean to impose his own essentially cinematic style and thematic emphases over Noel Coward's story. One of the British cinema's enduring masterpieces, it is open to a variety of interpretations, but it is immaculate in its detail and depiction of a certain strata of British society.

Great Expectaions and Oliver Twist (1948) both furthered lean's reputation as a director and remain the best adaptations of English literature ever filmed. It is difficult to choose between the two, but if Great Expectaions is the more profound work, echoing Dickens' growing maturity and brilliantly evoking the darkness surrounding the characters in its combination of fairy-tale and social realism, Oliver Twist is the more ambitious, with some vivid characterizations - particularly Alec Guinness' fagin - and some stunningly executed sequences, such as the climax with Sikes on the roof which utilizes both Russian montage theories and German Expressionism.

great expectaions
(1946)

Based on H.G. Wells' novel, The Passionate Friends re-examines some of the themes found in Brief Encounter. The film starred Trevor Howard and Lean's actress wife Ann Todd (they divorced in 1957). Madeleine is a visually striking Victorian melodrama in which Ann Todd plays an upper-middle-class girl who is accused of poissoning her former lover, a destitute Frenchman, Madeleine is tried for murder but the case against her is 'unproven'. It is a bleak, unresolved story that contains Lean's most elaborate attempt to examine the hypocrisies of 'polite' society.

These early films were produced by Cineguild, a company founded by Lean. producer Anthony Havelock-Allan and camaraman Ronald Neame. In 1952, Cineguild was disbanded and Lean went to Alexander Korda's ailing London Films to make The SOund barrier, written by Terence Rattigan and starring Ralph Richardson as a typical Lean hero driven by an obsession (designing a supersonic plane) which consumes both his family and his humanity. After Hobson's Choice (1954), a delightful Victorian comedy witht he incomparable Charles Laughton as a drunken bootmaker whose chauvinism is successfully challenged by his eldest daughter, and Summer Madness, another return to Brief Encounter territory with Katherine Hepburn as an Americam schoolmarm frightened by romance in a gloriously visualized Venice, Lean teamed up wuth producer Sam Spiegel to make The Bridge on the River Kwai.

the bridge on the river kwai
(1957)

One of the key British films of the Fifties, this film uses the basic framework of the 'war is futile' genre for an exemplary study of military codes and conduct. While confined in a remote Japanese POW camp, Lean's extraordinary hero Colonel Nicholson builds a bridge to boost morale among his dejected troops, to show the enemy what British soldiers are made of and, finally, to justify a meaningless life in enforced exile. His moment of self-revelation comes when he attempts to foil an Allied raid on his beloved bridge, resulting in the deaths of several of the commandos taking part. His cry 'What have I done?' is a tragic epitaph.

Lawrence of Arabia, scripted by Robert Bolt, is perhaps Lean's greatest film. Far from being an objective analysis of Lawrence the film projects his legend, his contradictions and tortured soul as a subjective Homeric adventure. The film is arranged as a continous mirage, showing Lawrence's self-delusion as an almost biblical hero - if not a god - who achieves the impossible and has power over life and death. Rich in characterization and social observation, it also united Lean with camaraman Freddie Young, whose 70mm compositions and colour texturing are astonishing.

lawrence of arabia
(1962)

Epics of passion

Lean, Bolt and Young turned Doctor Zhivago into MGM's biggest hit since Gone With the Wind (1939), which it closely resembles in its love story engulfed by the tide of history (this time the Russian Revolution). Doctor Zhivago might lack the neurotic qualities that characterize Lean's best work but it still leaves cinemas awash with tears.

The pantheist imagery of Lean's work was most fully realised in Ryan's Daughter, an ambitious and prohibitively expensive film mostly shot on location on the awesome west coast of Ireland and which was approxinately three years in the making. Bolt's original screenplay reworks Hardyesque formulas into a story about romantic excess and moral cowardice, set during the Troubles of 1916 and complete with overbearing priest, village idiot, crippled war hero and sexless schoolteacher. It is Lean's most exreme film. for his admirers a masterpiece and for his detractors the last straw.

ryan's daughter
(1970)

A Passage to India (1984) also had its critics. Yet the film is not only visually ravishing, it united a preoccupation of the sorce author, E.M. Forster, 90 years earlier, with one of Lean's own - the fate bestowed by an uncomprehending society on the individual who attempts to be different.

He was knighted for his services to cinema.

David Lean died of cancer in London on the 16th April 1991. Was right in final pre-production for the filming of Nostromo (based on the Joseph Conrad novel) when he died.

- start oofff biography

Brief Encounter:
Worldwide Posters

filmography

1934 Java Head (ed. only)
1935 Escape Me Never (ed. only)
1936 Ball at Savoy (ed. only)
1936 As You Like It (ed. only)
1937 The Wife of General Ling (ed. only)
1938 Pygmalion (ed. only)
1939 Spies of the Air (ed. only)
1939 French Without Tears (ed. only)

1941 Major Barbara (some scenes only, uncredited; +ed)

1941 49th Parallel (ed. only)
1941 One of Our Aircraft is Missing (ed. only)
1942 In Which We Serve (co-dir. only)
1944 This Happy Breed (+co-sc)
1945 Blithe Spirit (+co-sc)
1945 Brief Encounter (+co-sc)
1946 Great Expectations (+co-sc)
1948 Oliver Twist (+co-sc)

1949 The Passionate Friends (+co-sc) (USA: One Woman's Story)

1950 Madeleine (USA: The Strange Case of Madeleine)

1952 The Sound Barrier (+ prod) (USA: Breaking the Sound Barrier/Star Bound)

1954 Hobson's Choice (+ prod; + co-sc)

1955 Summer Madness (+ co-sc) (USA/GB)(USA: Summertime)

1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai
1962 Lawrence of Arabia
1965 Doctor Zhivago (USA)
1970 Ryan's Daughter

1979 Lost and Found - The Story of Cook's Anchor (co-dir; co-prod; + narr. only)

1984 A Passage to India

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