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| David
Lean |
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| Director
/ Screenwriter / Producer / Editor |
| 1908 - 1991 |
| Born March 25,
Croydon, Surrey, England |
| Key
Production Country: UK |
| Key Genres: Drama,
Period Film, Romantic Drama, Melodrama, Romance |
| Key
Collaborators: Alec
Guinness (Leading Character Player), Guy Green (Cinematographer), Jack
Hildyard (Cinematographer), Jack
Harris (Editor), Maurice Jarre (Composer), John Bryan (Production
Designer), Ann Todd (Leading Player), Trevor Howard (Leading Player),
John Mills (Leading Player), Ronald Neame (Producer/Cinematographer/Screenwriter) |
| Highly Recommended: Great Expectations
(1946), Oliver Twist (1948) |
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Recommended: Brief
Encounter (1945), Blithe Spirit (1945), Madeleine (1949), Passionate
Friends (1949), Hobson's Choice (1954), Summertime (1955), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) |
| Links:
[
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [ All-Movie
Guide ] [ Senses
of Cinema: Great Directors ] [
Film Reference ]
[ David Lean.com ] [
David Lean: An
Internet Resource ] [
Screen Online
Biography ] [ BFI
Tribute ] [ BBC
Audio Interview (1966) ] [
BritMovie Biography ] [
New Yorker Article (2008) ] [
Senses of Cinema Article (2008) ] |
| Books:
[ David
Lean: A Biography ] [
David
Lean: A Portrait ] [ David
Lean and His Films ] [ David
Lean: An Intimate Portrait ]
[
David Lean ]
[
Beyond the Epic: The Life And Films of David Lean ] [
The Cinema of David Lean ] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
| 1,000
Greatest Films: Brief
Encounter (1945), Great
Expectations (1946), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962),
Doctor Zhivago (1965) |
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"All
of his films, no matter how small or large their dimensions,
demonstrate an obsessive cultivation of craft, a fastidious
concern with production detail that defines the "quality"
postwar British cinema. That craft and concern are as hyperbolic
in their devices as is the medium itself. Viewers surprised at
the attention to detail and composition in Ryan's Daughter,
a work whose scope would appear to call for a more modest
approach, had really not paid attention to the truly enormous
dimensions of Brief Encounter, a film that defines, for
many, intimist cinema." -
Charles Affron (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) |
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"Notoriously a pernickety perfectionist, he favoured weighty
historical and literary subjects but regularly succumbed to
visual grandiosity...Indeed, his early, more modest films are
his best, notably his versions of Dickens' Great Expectations
and Oliver Twist, where his feel for design and sharp
editing combine to create lively, intelligent entertainments in
which the characters are not yet overshadowed by milieu." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"I
am more than ever of the opinion that Lean became lost in the
sense of his own pictorial grandeur. The Passionate Friends
and Madeleine, for instance, stand up so much better than
those battleship pictures that came later. Not even the
re-release of Lawrence - beautiful, and with some lost
material restored - could furnish any sense of ideas behind
it...I challenge anyone to see Oliver Twist and Dr.
Zhivago and not admit the loss. It will take a very good
biography to explain that process." -
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002) |
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"Brief
Encounter (46) illustrates Lean's great ability with modest
drama; Great Expectations (47) likewise for period
stories. The director's understanding that grandeur can never
replace plot and character accounts for the brilliance of his
spectacles (Bridge on the River Kwai, 57; Lawrence of
Arabia, 62), which are pictorially stunning and dramatically
powerful." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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"My
distinguishing talent is the ability to put people under the
microscope, perhaps to go one or two layers farther down than
some other directors." -
David Lean |
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