David Lean biography

Synopsis

Profile

Lean was the son of strict Quaker parents and did not see his first film until age 17. He began his film career in 1928 as a teaboy for Gaumont-British studios, where he soon was promoted to clapboard boy, and finally to editor, a position at which he excelled. By the end of the 1930s Lean was the most highly-paid film editor working in British cinema and widely regarded as the best. Until the end of his career, Lean considered editing the most interesting step in the filmmaking process and always contracted with studios to cut his own films.

Lean's collaboration with playwright Nol Coward began in 1942 when they codirected the drama In Which We Serve. The success of this film allowed for the funding and formation of Cineguild, a production company helmed by Lean and cofounded by Coward, producer Anthony Havelock-Allan, and director-cinematographer Ronald Neame. The company's initial productions—three adaptations of Coward's stage plays—were Lean's first solo efforts as a director. The first of these, the domestic drama This Happy Breed (1944), is today seen as hopelessly dated because of Coward's patronizing treatment of the lower middle-class. The second was Coward's classic supernatural comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), regarded as a good effort but little more than a stage play on celluloid. The last of the Coward vehicles, the romantic melodrama Brief Encounter (1945; based on Coward's play Still Life), was a masterpiece and the first of many Lean films to employ the theme of private obsessions versus outward appearances.

Two Charles Dickens classics served as source material for Lean's next efforts. Great Expectations (1946), which garnered Academy Award nominations for best director, picture, and screenplay, is still considered by many to be the finest screen adaptation of a Dickens novel. Oliver Twist (1948) is also highly regarded and features a memorable performance by Alec Guinness as Fagin. In 1950 Cineguild disbanded, and Lean began working for British producer Alexander Korda at Shepperton Studios.

Lean's films of the late 1940s and early '50s are regarded as good but unremarkable, highlighted by the standout performances of Charles Laughton in Hobson's Choice (1954) and Katharine Hepburn in Summertime (1955). He returned to prominence with the prisoner-of-war drama The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)