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David Lean
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David Lean was born March 25 th 1908, and his strict religious background meant that movies were forbidden. This made it all the more bizarre that he decided upon movies as his lifetime career. He started out right at the bottom, as a tea boy. However, when sound was introduced to films, he took on a more involved role in editing, becoming one of the most trusted editors of the time.
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David Lean began his career carrying tea to filmmakers and doing other menial tasks. He then graduated to film cutter, demonstrating he had a good eye and helping out directors who could not master the Moviola, a contraption that synchronized picture and sound. And before long Lean had become a superb editor. In principle, this should have qualified him to be a commanding director: Visuals, not the words, are what predominate in cinema. Get the montage right — as he did in "Pygmalion" (1938) — and you have a rush of nearly wordless scenes that reveal all you need to know about Eliza Doolittle and her professor. This technique of cutting to decisive moments nearly equals that epitome of editing, the sequence of scenes that shows the deterioration of Charles Foster Kane's marriage in Orson Welles's masterpiece.
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David Lean's films were nominated for an astonishing 57 Academy Awards, of which 27 won Oscars. He made unique movies on a grand scale, with huge stories on vast canvases. He was aided by hundreds of technicians, thousands of extras and the most talented actors in the world. Yet he singularly controlled this vast army giving pleasure and inspiration to millions. His films reflected his own life - the single brooding perfectionist force to a great endeavour - whether they be Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago or Brief Encounter. Collated by his widow, Lady Sandra Lean, this is a highly personal account in text and images by the people that came into contact with David through his work and his private life.
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David Lean is quoted on his use of scenery in Ryan's Daughter and Doctor Zhivago, on romantic films in general, and on what he believes audiences want in a film. A brief summary of public and critical reaction to these two films is included,
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Beyond this intricate subjectification, Lean may compound the frame's reality with dramatic irony. This is exemplified in the sequence where Nancy is followed by the Artful Dodger. Through several shots, the audience has been permitted to observe the Dodger lurking outside the house and trailing behind Nancy down the rainy streets, a fact of vital concern of which she is unaware. An example of a subtler ironic mode on a figurative level is the first conversation between Monks and Fagin in the garret. Here, while Fagin's eyes stay on his body moving in and out of the shot, from the audience's vantage Monks momentarily becomes a thin, black shadow on the right side of the frame [Frame 7]. This stylised rendering of Monks' form implies his malevolent character as well as the manner in which his presence looms ominously over the entire picture, a “fact” which Fagin (as the shadow is not in his line of sight) cannot know.
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It was quite a surprise to learn that David Lean had not read Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations before he embarked on his film version in 1945. The closeness of the adaptation, the understanding of the characters, make one swear it was made by an aficionado, for Dickens is part of every English child’s education. Lean was not “well read”—amongst Dickens’ works, he claimed acquaintance only with A Christmas Carol—but like Dickens, he was a born storyteller.
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David Lean