David Lean

• 1. The Teaboy Who Edited History

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  David Lean was born on the 25th of March 1908 at 38 Blenheim Crescent in South Croydon, Surrey. His parents were Quakers who sent him to the Leighton Park School in Reading. He left school in the Christmas Term of 1926 at age eighteen and joined his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. A Brownie box camera given by an uncle when he was ten years old became his great hobby. He printed and developed films while working a job that bored him. In 1927 he visited Gaumont Studios after an aunt advised him to find work he enjoyed. His enthusiasm earned him a month trial without pay. He started as a teaboy before becoming a clapperboy and then third assistant director. By 1930 he edited newsreels for Gaumont Pictures and Movietone. His move to feature films began with Freedom of the Seas in 1934 and Escape Me Never in 1935. He edited Gabriel Pascal's productions of Pygmalion in 1938 and Major Barbara in 1941. After editing more than two dozen features by 1942 he began his directing career.

• 2. Coward And Dickens In The Cutting Room

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  Lean made his directorial debut with In Which We Serve in 1942 through collaboration with Noël Coward. This marked the first of four collaborations between the two men. Their partnership continued with This Happy Breed in 1944, Blithe Spirit in 1945, and Brief Encounter also in 1945. Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard starred in Brief Encounter as quietly understated clandestine lovers torn between passion and middle-class marriages. The film shared Grand Prix honors at the 1946 Cannes film festival. It garnered Lean his first Academy nominations for directing and screen adaptation while earning Celia Johnson a nomination for Best Actress. Two celebrated Charles Dickens adaptations followed with Great Expectations in 1946 and Oliver Twist in 1948. Alec Guinness starred in both films and became Lean's good luck charm. The portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist was controversial during its February 1949 Berlin screening. A riot occurred among the surviving Jewish community after that showing. Problems arose in New York where private screenings led to condemnation by the Anti-Defamation League and American Board of Rabbis. Lean wrote that they were surprised when accused of being anti-Semitic. The production code delayed US release until July 1951 after cuts totaling eight minutes.

• 3. Epics That Conquered The World

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  The Bridge on the River Kwai released in 1957 became the highest-grossing film of that year in the United States. William Holden and Alec Guinness starred in this story about British and American prisoners surviving in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based on a novel by Pierre Boulle, it won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Alec Guinness. Guinness battled with Lean to give more depth to his role as an obsessively correct British commander determined to build the best possible bridge for his Japanese captors in Burma. Lawrence of Arabia followed in 1962 after extensive location work across the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. This project marked Lean's first collaboration with playwright Robert Bolt who rewrote an original script by Michael Wilson. French composer Maurice Jarre created a soaring score on his first Lean film and won his first Oscar for Best Original Score. Peter O'Toole playing Lawrence became an international star through this film. Lean was nominated for ten Oscars winning seven including two for Best Director. He remains the only British director to win more than one Oscar for directing. Doctor Zhivago released in 1965 had his greatest box-office success as a romance set during the Russian Revolution.

• 4. The Luncheon That Broke A Director

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  Lean's Ryan's Daughter released in 1970 received far fewer positive reviews than his previous work. It was particularly savaged by New York critics who felt its massive visual scale did not suit its small-scale romantic narrative. The film earned $31 million making it the eighth highest-grossing film of that year despite critical backlash. Some critics argued the extended running time and gorgeous Irish beaches were inappropriate for the story. The poor reception prompted Lean to meet with the National Society of Film Critics at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Time critic Richard Schickel asked point blank how he could have made a piece of bullshit like Ryan's Daughter after directing Brief Encounter. These critics lacerated the film for two hours directly to David Lean's face. He said they took the film to bits and it really had such an awful effect on him for several years. You begin to think maybe they're right, he told a later television interview. Why on earth am I making films if I don't have to? It shakes one's confidence terribly. This devastation put him off from making films for a long time.

• 5. Fourteen Years Of Silence And Plans

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  The critical failure of Ryan's Daughter led Lean to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking starting in 1970. During this period he planned numerous projects that never came to fruition. From 1977 until 1980 he worked on Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian which was originally to be released as two-part films named The Lawbreakers and The Long Arm. Warner Bros withdrew financial backing so he decided to combine them into one project. Melvyn Bragg ended up writing a considerable portion of the script after Robert Bolt suffered a serious stroke. Lean abandoned the project after overseeing casting and construction of a $4 million Bounty replica. Actor Mel Gibson brought Roger Donaldson to direct instead when De Laurentiis did not want to lose millions already invested. A Passage to India released in 1984 became his last completed film after entirely shooting on location in the sub-continent. He rejected a draft by Santha Rama Rau and wrote the script himself while editing the film with equal credit status. Nostromo had a total budget of $46 million and was six weeks away from filming at the time of his death. The production collapsed despite assembling an all-star cast including Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield, Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole, Christopher Lambert, Isabella Rossellini, and Dennis Quaid.

• 6. The Perfectionist Who Waited For Sunsets

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  Lean was notorious for his perfectionist approach to filmmaking that involved waiting forever for the perfect sunset. Director Claude Chabrol stated they were the only directors prepared to wait months rather than days for ideal conditions. Hugh Hudson called him a man driven to achieve the perfect realisation of his ideas and ruthless in that pursuit. His films reveal a consistently tragic vision of romantic sensibility attempting to reach beyond constraints of everyday life. Setting functions as a presence with as much dramatic form as any character in his work. Lean's signature characters are ordinary dreamers and epic visionaries who want to transform the world according to their expectations. The tragic flaw in these characters is self-centeredness which can lead to misimpression preventing them from seeing what is clear to others. Michael Newton analyzed Brief Encounter and Doctor Zhivago noting how style and theme create close relationships in his work. John Orr examined the stylised oscillation of romance and restraint shaping so much of his output. Tom Charity argued it is in the cutting where you feel both romantic ardour and repression creating central tension. Lean could have given us kitsch but his staging and cutting blend fluently linking evocation of romantic sublime to découpage and sense of place.

• 7. Legacies Written In Film And Memory

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  Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese claim David Lean as one of their primary influences among later directors. They helped restore Lawrence of Arabia in 1989 after it had been substantially altered by studios for theatrical release and television versions. The theatrical re-release greatly revived Lean's reputation following this restoration effort. Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Spike Lee, Sergio Leone, Sir John Boorman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Lawrence Kasdan, and Guillermo del Toro all acknowledged significant influence by Lean. John Woo once named Lawrence of Arabia among his top three films. Joe Wright cited Doctor Zhivago as an important influence on Pride & Prejudice and Atonement while Christopher Nolan referenced Lean's works for The Dark Knight Rises. Lean received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990 before dying at age 83 on the 16th of April 1991 in Limehouse, London. He was interred at Putney Vale Cemetery. Seven of his films appeared on the British Film Institute Top 100 list with Brief Encounter ranked second and Lawrence of Arabia third. Lawrence of Arabia placed fifth on American Film Institute's 1998 list of 100 Years...100 Movies. In 2012 he appeared among British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake for a new version of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album cover.