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David Lean

Sir David Lean CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of British cinema. He directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984).[1] He also directed the film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).

For other people with the same name, see David Lean (disambiguation).

David Lean

(1908-03-25)25 March 1908

Croydon, Surrey, England

16 April 1991(1991-04-16) (aged 83)

Limehouse, London, England
  • Film director
  • film producer
  • screenwriter
  • film editor

1930–1991

Isabel Lean
(m. 1930; div. 1936)
(m. 1940; div. 1949)
(m. 1949; div. 1957)
Leila Matkar
(m. 1960; div. 1978)
Sandra Hotz
(m. 1981; div. 1984)
Sandra Cooke
(m. 1990)

Peter Lean

Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's In Which We Serve, which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios, beginning with Summertime in 1955. The critical failure of his film Ryan's Daughter led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he planned a number of film projects which never came to fruition. In 1984, he had a career revival with A Passage to India adapted from E. M. Forster's novel. This was a hit with critics, but it proved to be the last film that Lean directed.


Lean is described by film critic Michael Sragow as "a director's director, whose total mastery of filmcraft commands nothing less than awe among his peers".[2] He has been lauded by directors such as Steven Spielberg,[3] Stanley Kubrick,[4] Martin Scorsese,[5] and Ridley Scott.[6] He was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound "Directors' Top Directors" poll in 2002.[7] He was nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director, which he won twice for The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, and he has seven films in the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films (with three of them being in the top five)[8][9] and was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990.

Early life and education[edit]

David Lean was born on 25 March 1908 at 38 Blenheim Crescent, South Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye).[10] His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original Inklings literary club when a student at Oxford University. Lean was a half-hearted schoolboy with a dreamy nature who was labelled a "dud"[11] of a student; he left school in the Christmas Term of 1926, at the age of 18,[12] and entered his father's chartered accountancy firm as an apprentice. A more formative event for his career than his formal education was an uncle's gift, when Lean was aged ten, of a Brownie box camera. "You usually didn't give a boy a camera until he was 16 or 17 in those days. It was a huge compliment and I succeeded at it." Lean printed and developed his films, and it was his "great hobby".[13] In 1923,[14] his father deserted the family and Lean would later follow a similar path after his own first marriage and child.[11]

Career[edit]

Period as film editor[edit]

Bored by his work, Lean spent every evening in the cinema, and in 1927, after an aunt had advised him to find a job he enjoyed, he visited Gaumont Studios where his obvious enthusiasm earned him a month's trial without pay. He was taken on as a teaboy, promoted to clapperboy, and soon rose to the position of third assistant director. By 1930 he was working as an editor on newsreels, including those of Gaumont Pictures and Movietone, while his move to feature films began with Freedom of the Seas (1934) and Escape Me Never (1935).[15]


He edited Gabriel Pascal's film productions of two George Bernard Shaw plays, Pygmalion (1938) and Major Barbara (1941). He edited Powell & Pressburger's 49th Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942). After this last film, Lean began his directing career, after editing more than two dozen features by 1942. As Tony Sloman wrote in 1999, "As the varied likes of David Lean, Robert Wise, Terence Fisher and Dorothy Arzner have proved, the cutting rooms are easily the finest grounding for film direction."[16] David Lean was given honorary membership of the Guild of British Film Editors in 1968.

British films[edit]

His first work as a director was in collaboration with Noël Coward on In Which We Serve (1942), and he later adapted several of Coward's plays into successful films. These films are This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Brief Encounter (1945) with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as quietly understated clandestine lovers, torn between their unpredictable passion and their respective orderly middle-class marriages in suburban England. The film shared Grand Prix honors at the 1946 Cannes film festival and garnered Lean his first Academy nominations for directing and screen adaptation, and Celia Johnson a nomination for Best Actress. It has since become a classic, one of the most highly regarded British films.


Two celebrated Charles Dickens adaptations followed – Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). David Shipman wrote in The Story of Cinema: Volume Two (1984): "Of the other Dickens films, only Cukor's David Copperfield approaches the excellence of this pair, partly because his casting, too, was near perfect".[17] These two films were the first directed by Lean to star Alec Guinness, whom Lean considered his "good luck charm". The actor's portrayal of Fagin was controversial at the time. The first screening in Berlin during February 1949 offended the surviving Jewish community and led to a riot. It caused problems too in New York, and after private screenings, was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Board of Rabbis. "To our surprise it was accused of being anti-Semitic", Lean wrote. "We made Fagin an outsize and, we hoped, an amusing Jewish villain."[18] The terms of the production code meant that the film's release in the United States was delayed until July 1951 after cuts amounting to eight minutes.[19]


The next film directed by Lean was The Passionate Friends (1949), an atypical Lean film, but one which marked his first occasion to work with Claude Rains, who played the husband of a woman (Ann Todd) torn between him and an old flame (Howard). The Passionate Friends was the first of three films to feature the actress Ann Todd, who became his third wife. Madeleine (1950), set in Victorian-era Glasgow is about an 1857 cause célèbre with Todd's lead character accused of murdering a former lover. "Once more", writes film critic David Thomson "Lean settles on the pressing need for propriety, but not before the film has put its characters and the audience through a wringer of contradictory feelings."[20] The last of the films with Todd, The Sound Barrier (1952), has a screenplay by the playwright Terence Rattigan and was the first of his three films for Sir Alexander Korda's London Films. Hobson's Choice (1954), with Charles Laughton in the lead, was based on the play by Harold Brighouse.

Isabel Lean (28 June 1930 – 1936) (his first cousin); one son, Peter

(23 November 1940 – 1949)

Kay Walsh

(21 May 1949 – 1957)

Ann Todd

Leila Matkar (4 July 1960 – 1978) (from , India); Lean's longest-lasting marriage[30][31]

Hyderabad

Sandra Hotz (28 October 1981 – 1984)

Sandra Cooke (15 December 1990 – 16 April 1991, Lean's death)

Lean was a long-term resident of Limehouse, East London. His home on Narrow Street is still owned by his family . His co-writer and producer, Norman Spencer, has said Lean was a "huge womaniser," and that "to my knowledge, he had almost 1,000 women".[29] He was married six times, had one son, and at least two grandchildren—all from whom he was completely estranged[5]—and was divorced five times. He was survived by his last wife Sandra Cooke, art dealer and co-author (with Barry Chattington) of David Lean: An Intimate Portrait (2001),[11] and by Peter Lean, his son from his first marriage.


His six wives were:


Lean was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1953, and was knighted for his contributions and services to the arts in 1984.[32] Lean received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990. In 2012, Lean was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—celebrating the British cultural figures of his lifetime that he most admires.[33][34]


In 1999, the British Film Institute compiled its list of the Top 100 British films. Seven of Lean's films appeared on the list:


In addition, on the American Film Institute's 1998 list of 100 Years...100 Movies, Lawrence of Arabia placed 5th, The Bridge on the River Kwai 13th, and Doctor Zhivago 39th. In the 2007 revised edition, Lawrence of Arabia placed 7th and The Bridge on the River Kwai placed 36th.


With five wins out of six nominations, Lean directed more films that won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography at the Oscars than any other director, for Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter—the last nomination being for A Passage to India.


Lean died in Limehouse, London on 16 April 1991, at the age of 83. He was interred at Putney Vale Cemetery.

Brownlow, Kevin (15 August 1996). . Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-14578-1.

David Lean: A Biography

Phillips, Gene (24 November 2006). . University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-7155-5.

Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean

Shipman, David (1984). . Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-28259-5.

The Story of Cinema: From Citizen Kane to the present day

. The Daily Telegraph. 17 April 1991. Archived from the original on 3 July 2011. Retrieved 22 June 2014. Unsigned obituary of Lean.

"Sir David Lean – Obituary"

(31 March 2008). "Master and Commander: Remembering David Lean". The New Yorker. Retrieved 22 June 2014. Lane's appreciation of Lean on his centennial

Lane, Anthony

(February 2004). "David Lean". Senses of Cinema (30). Retrieved 22 June 2014. Silver's essay on Lean's career compiled as part of the Senses of Cinema Great Directors series.

Silver, Alain

Santas, Constantine (2012). . Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-8210-2.

The Epic Films of David Lean

(9 May 2008). "Unhealed wounds". Retrieved 22 June 2014. Thomson's appreciation of Lean on the occasion of his centennial.

Thomson, David

at IMDb

David Lean

Archived 18 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine on the BAFTA website

David Lean Archive

at the BFI's Screenonline

David Lean

Biography at British Film Institute

by Armond White, New York Press 3 September 2008

Mean Lean Filmmaking Machine

Honours from the Queen

Charity which makes grants to restore Lean's films, and to film studies students.

David Lean Foundation.

Literature on David Lean