Sir David Lean KBE (March 25,
1908 – April 16, 1991) was an
English film director and producer, best remembered for big-screen epics such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the
River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India . Widely acclaimed and winning the praise of directors such as
Steven Spielberg[citation needed], Martin Scorsese[citation needed], Stanley Kubrick[citation needed], and George Lucas[citation needed], Lean was voted 9th greatest film
director of all time in the BFI "Directors Top Directors" poll 2002.
Early life
He was born in Croydon, Greater London to Francis
William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye. His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil
at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading.
Film career
Editing
Lean started at the bottom, as a clapperboard assistant. By 1930 he was working as an
editor on newsreels, including Gaumont Pictures and Movietone. His career in feature films began with Escape Me Never in 1935.
He went on to edit Gabriel Pascal's film productions of two George Bernard Shaw plays, Pygmalion (1938)
and Major Barbara (1941), and Powell & Pressburger's Forty-Ninth
Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft is Missing
(1942).
Directing
His first work as a director was in partnership with Noel Coward on In Which We Serve (1942), and he went on to adapt several of Coward's plays into successful films.
These included This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Brief Encounter (1945). These
were followed by two celebrated Charles Dickens adaptations - Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver
Twist (1948), as well as The Sound Barrier (1952) a collaboration
with the playwright Terence Rattigan, and what many consider the definitive version of
Hobson's Choice (1954), based on the play by Harold Brighouse.
Summertime (1955), marked a new direction in for Lean. Filmed in colour, it
was shot entirely on location in Venice. U.S.-financed, the film starred Katharine Hepburn as a middle-aged American woman who has a romance while on holiday in Venice.
In the following years, Lean went on to make the blockbusters for which he is best known: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won an Academy Award, followed by another for Lawrence of
Arabia, (1962). Doctor Zhivago (1965) was another major hit, but
after the moderately successful Ryan's Daughter in 1970, he did not direct
another film until A Passage to India (1984), which would be his last.
He was knighted in 1984.
He was in the midst of planning an epic production of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo when he died from cancer, aged 83. Marlon Brando,
Paul Scofield, Anthony Quinn, Christopher Lambert, Isabella Rossellini, and
Dennis Quaid were among the ensemble cast set to star in the film.
Nostromo would eventually be made as a BBC mini-series.
Reputation
Although he is considered one of the greatest film directors of all time by many, Lean's critical reputation has shifted over
the years. While his early British films have generally had near-universal acclaim, his epics have been the cause of much
controversy and discussion.
Some critics, including Pauline Kael and Andrew
Sarris, disliked Lean's epics as a whole, arguing that they were simply visual spectacles with no depth - a view which
many of Lean's stringent critics still hold to this day. Director François Truffaut
once referred to Lean's films dismissively as "Oscar packages." Others felt that while
Kwai and Lawrence were accomplished films, his later epics - Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter were simply
attempts to replicate his previous successes. In his review of Doctor
Zhivago, Richard Schickel argued that the film, while flawed in many
aspects, was a great film if regarded in a purely visual sense - an argument which plays into the hands of Lean's detractors; but
many other critics were also praiseworthy of the scripts of Lean's epics (by Carl Foreman,
Michael Wilson, and Robert Bolt), which
were considered to be more intelligent, literate, and believable than most epic film scripts.
Lean's films in general have always been extremely popular with the general public, with Kwai, Lawrence, and
Zhivago all placing in the highest-grossing films of all-time. While Ryan and India were less successful,
since their releases on DVD they have also gotten much positive exposure and are finding wider audiences than previously.
As Lean himself pointed out (see Kevin Brownlow: David Lean, p. 483), however, Lean's films were (and are) perhaps
appreciated most by fellow directors as a showcase of the film maker's art. Steven
Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in particular were huge fans of Lean's epic films,
and claimed him as one of their primary influences. (Both also helped in the 1989 restoration of Lawrence which, when
released, greatly revived Lean's reputation.)
Roger Ebert, in writing of Doctor Zhivago, perhaps best sums up this view:
[1]
I agree that the plot of "Doctor Zhivago" lumbers noisily from nowhere to nowhere. That the characters undergo inexplicable
changes of heart and personality. That it is not easy to care much about Zhivago himself. . . That the life of the movie is in
its corners. . . That "Lara's Theme," by Maurice Jarre, goes on the same shelf as "Waltzing Matilda" as tunes that threaten to
drive me mad. And yet the stage has running water, and the horses look real enough to ride. "Doctor Zhivago". . . is an example
of superb old-style craftsmanship at the service of a soppy romantic vision, and although its portentous historical drama
evaporates once you return to the fresh air, watching it can be seductive.
Marriage
Lean was married six times, and divorced five — his last wife survived him:
- Isabel Lean (1930–1936) (David's first cousin) — one son Peter
- Kay Walsh (1940–1949)
- Ann Todd (1949–1957)
- Leila Matkar (1960–1978)
- Sandra Hotz (1981–1984)
- Sandra Cooke (1990–1991)
Trivia
- Peter O'Toole's performance as an eccentric filmmaker in 1980s The Stunt Man was loosely based on Lean, who directed him in Lawrence of Arabia.
- Lean was a long-term resident of Limehouse, East
London. His home on Narrow Street is still owned by his family.
- Often cited John Ford as one of his favorite directors, and used that director's
The Searchers (1956) in particular as a reference point while shooting his
epic films (e.g. Lawrence and Zhivago). Another major influence was King
Vidor's The Big Parade (1926), which he directly referenced in a scene in
Zhivago.
- A favorite director of Steven Spielberg, Martin
Scorsese, George Lucas, and innumerable others. Lucas has referenced his films
(Lawrence in particular) throughout his Star Wars film series.
- Frequently attempted to work with Marlon Brando, in such roles as Victor Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (which went to
Rod Steiger) and the Major in Ryan's
Daughter, and was also planning for him to be in his production of Nostromo
which he had planned before his death. He did not, however, want to give him the title role in Lawrence, as he preferred
an English actor; Spiegel wanted Brando as T. E. Lawrence and not Lean.
- Directed some scenes of The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
while George Stevens was doing location work in Nevada. Most of his scenes involved
Claude Rains and Jose Ferrer, both of whom had
previously worked with Lean on Lawrence of Arabia.
- Worked with Alec Guinness on six of his films. The two frequently fought with each
other; Lean had adapted Guinness's stage version of Great Expectations for the
screen for his second film, and thus felt responsible for Guinness's screen career; Guinness resented this assertion immensely.
This, along with Guinness's perfectionism and difficult personality and what he perceived as Lean's authoritarian attitude while
shooting a film, caused the two to quarrel on virtually all of their films together. Despite their differences, the two men held
each other in high regard and continued to work together throughout their careers.
- Among the films he attempted to make, but was forced to abandon or pass on to others, are The
Wind Cannot Read (1958), The Bounty (1984), Out of Africa (1985), and Empire of the
Sun (1987).
- In the 1990s a cinema was built in Croydon, Greater
London to honour the great director who was born there. David Lean Cinema can
be found situated within the Croydon Clocktower on Katherine Street.
Filmography
Quotation
"I wouldn't take the advice of a lot of so-called critics on how to shoot a close-up of a teapot."
"Let's have a lean inning!"[citation needed]
References
External links
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