Editing David Lean (section)

==Career==

===Period as film editor===
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 British|Gaumont Studios]] where his obvious enthusiasm earned him a month's trial without pay. He was taken on as a teaboy, promoted to [[clapperboard|clapperboy]], and soon rose to the position of [[Assistant director|third assistant director]]. By 1930 he was working as an editor on [[newsreels]], including those of [[Gaumont Film Company|Gaumont Pictures]] and [[Movietone News|Movietone]], while his move to feature films began with ''[[Freedom of the Seas (film)|Freedom of the Seas]]'' (1934) and ''[[Escape Me Never (1935 film)|Escape Me Never]]'' (1935).<ref>{{cite web |last1=Collins |first1=Andrew |title=The epic legacy of David Lean |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/04/features |website=The Guardian |date=4 May 2008 |publisher=Guardian News & Media Limited |access-date=6 January 2019 |archive-date=7 September 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170907213402/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/04/features |url-status=live }}</ref>

He edited [[Gabriel Pascal]]'s film productions of two [[George Bernard Shaw]] plays, ''[[Pygmalion (1938 film)|Pygmalion]]'' (1938) and ''[[Major Barbara (film)|Major Barbara]]'' (1941). He edited [[Powell and Pressburger|Powell & Pressburger]]'s ''[[49th Parallel (film)|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 [[Anthony Sloman|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."<ref>Sloman, Tony (1999). [http://cinescale.20m.com/obit1.html "Obituary: Harold Kress"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110707061352/http://cinescale.20m.com/obit1.html |date=7 July 2011 }}, ''The Independent'', 26 October 1999. Online version retrieved 8 April 2009.</ref> David Lean was given honorary membership of the [[GBFTE|Guild of British Film Editors]] in 1968.

===British films===
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 (film)|This Happy Breed]]'' (1944), ''[[Blithe Spirit (1945 film)|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 film)|Great Expectations]]'' (1946) and ''[[Oliver Twist (1948 film)|Oliver Twist]]'' (1948). [[David Shipman (writer)|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".{{sfn|Shipman|1984|p=775}} 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."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=bKtQTBGaB3wC&pg=PA136 ''Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean''], University Press of Kentucky, 2006, pp.135–36</ref> The terms of the [[Motion Picture Production Code|production code]] meant that the film's release in the United States was delayed until July 1951 after cuts amounting to eight minutes.{{sfn|Phillips|2006|p=139}}

The next film directed by Lean was ''[[The Passionate Friends (1949 film)|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 film)|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 (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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Thomson|first=David|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/10/fiction1|title=Unhealed wounds|date=10 May 2008|work=The Guardian|access-date=31 December 2015|archive-date=7 December 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171207064912/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/10/fiction1|url-status=live}}</ref> 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 [[Alexander Korda|Sir Alexander Korda]]'s [[London Films]]. ''[[Hobson's Choice (1954 film)|Hobson's Choice]]'' (1954), with [[Charles Laughton]] in the lead, was based on the play by [[Harold Brighouse]].

===International films===
[[File:DavidLean1965.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Lean in Northern Finland in 1965 while shooting ''Doctor Zhivago'']]
''[[Summertime (1955 film)|Summertime]]'' (1955) marked a new departure for Lean. It was partly American financed, although again made for Korda's London Films. The film features [[Katharine Hepburn]] in the lead role as a middle-aged American woman who has a romance while on holiday in [[Venice]]. It was shot entirely on location there. Although best known for his epics, Lean's personal favourite of all his films was ''Summertime'', and Hepburn his favourite actress.<ref>{{cite book |last=Chandler |first=Charlotte |author-link=Charlotte Chandler |date=2010 |title=I Know Where I'm Going: Katharine Hepburn, a Personal Biography |location=Milwaukee, WI |publisher=Applause |isbn=978-1-907532-01-6 |page=161}}</ref>

====For Columbia and Sam Spiegel====

Lean's films now began to become infrequent but much larger in scale and more extensively released internationally. ''[[The Bridge on the River Kwai]]'' (1957) was based on a novel by [[Pierre Boulle]] recounting the story of British and American prisoners of war trying to survive in a Japanese prison camp during the [[Second World War]]. The film stars [[William Holden]] and [[Alec Guinness]] and became the highest-grossing film of 1957 in the United States. It won seven [[Academy Awards]], including [[Academy Award for Best Picture|Best Picture]], [[Academy Award for Best Director|Best Director]], and [[Academy Award for Best Actor|Best Actor]] for [[Alec Guinness]], who had battled with Lean to give more depth to his role as an obsessively correct British commander who is determined to build the best possible bridge for his Japanese captors in Burma.

After extensive location work in the Middle East, [[North Africa]], [[Spain]], and elsewhere, Lean's ''[[Lawrence of Arabia (film)|Lawrence of Arabia]]'' was released in 1962. This was the first project of Lean's with a screenplay by playwright [[Robert Bolt]], rewriting an original script by [[Michael Wilson (writer)|Michael Wilson]] (one of the two blacklisted writers of ''Bridge on the River Kwai''). It recounts the life of [[T. E. Lawrence]], the British officer who is depicted in the film as uniting the squabbling Bedouin peoples of the Arab peninsula to fight in [[World War I]] and then push on for independence.

After some hesitation, Alec Guinness appeared here in his fourth David Lean film as the Arab leader Prince Faisal, despite his misgivings from their conflicts on ''Bridge on the River Kwai''. French composer [[Maurice Jarre]], on his first Lean film, created a soaring film score with a famous theme and won his first Oscar for Best Original Score. The film turned actor [[Peter O'Toole]], playing Lawrence, into an international star. Lean was nominated for ten Oscars, winning seven, including two for Best Director. Lean remains the only British director to win more than one Oscar for directing.

====For MGM====

Lean had his greatest box-office success with ''[[Doctor Zhivago (film)|Doctor Zhivago]]'' (1965), a romance set during the [[Russian Revolution]]. The film, based on the Soviet suppressed novel by Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet [[Boris Pasternak]], tells the story of a brilliant and warm-hearted physician and poet ([[Omar Sharif]]) who, while seemingly happily married into the Russian aristocracy, and a father, falls in love with a beautiful abandoned young mother named Lara ([[Julie Christie]]) and struggles to be with her in the chaos of the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent [[Russian Civil War]].
[[File:Lean-and-Sharif-in-Joensuu-1965.jpg|alt=Lean-and-Sharif-in-Joensuu-1965|thumb|Lean and [[Omar Sharif]] arriving to Joensuu, Finland, to shoot ''[[Doctor Zhivago (film)|Doctor Zhivago]]'', March 1965]]

Initially, reviews for ''Doctor Zhivago'' were lukewarm, but critics have since come to see it as one of Lean's best films, with film director [[Paul Greengrass]] calling it "one of the great masterpieces of cinema".<ref>[http://www.bafta.org/media-centre/transcripts/paul-greengrass-david-lean-lecture] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170804133501/http://www.bafta.org/media-centre/transcripts/paul-greengrass-david-lean-lecture|date=4 August 2017}}. "Paul Greengrass: David Lean Lecture|BAFTA". Retrieved 28 May 2017.</ref> {{as of|2020}}, it is the 9th highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. Producer [[Carlo Ponti]] used [[Maurice Jarre|Maurice Jarre']]s [[Doctor Zhivago (soundtrack)|lush romantic score]] to create a pop tune called "[[Lara's Theme]]", which became an international hit song with lyrics under the title "Somewhere My Love", one of cinema's most successful theme songs. The British director of photography, [[Freddie Young]], won an Academy Award for his colour cinematography. Around the same time, Lean also directed some scenes of ''[[The Greatest Story Ever Told]]'' (1965) while [[George Stevens]] was committed to location work in Nevada.

Lean's ''[[Ryan's Daughter]]'' (1970) was released after an extended period on location in Ireland. A doomed romance set against the backdrop of 1916 Ireland's struggles against the British, it is loosely based on [[Gustave Flaubert]]'s ''[[Madame Bovary]]''. Starring the aging Hollywood 'bad boy' [[Robert Mitchum]] in an uncharacteristic role as a long-suffering Irish husband and British actress [[Sarah Miles]] as his faithless young wife, the film received far fewer positive reviews than the director's previous work, being particularly savaged by the New York critics. Some critics felt the film's massive visual scale on gorgeous Irish beaches and extended running time did not suit its small-scale romantic narrative. Nonetheless, the film was a box office success, earning $31 million and making it the 8th highest-grossing film of that year. It won two Academy Awards the following year, another for cinematographer [[Freddie Young]] and for supporting actor [[John Mills]] in his role as a village halfwit.

The poor critical reception of the film prompted Lean to meet with the [[National Society of Film Critics]], gathered at the [[Algonquin Hotel]] in New York, including ''[[The New Yorker]]''{{'s}} [[Pauline Kael]], and ask them why they objected to the movie. "I sensed trouble from the moment I sat down", Lean says of the now famous luncheon. [[Time (magazine)|''Time'']] critic [[Richard Schickel]] asked Lean point blank how he, the director of ''Brief Encounter'', could have made "a piece of bullshit" like ''Ryan's Daughter''.<ref>Wolcott, James (April 1997). "Waiting for Godard". Vanity Fair (Conde Nast)</ref> These critics so lacerated the film for two hours to David Lean's face that the devastated Lean was put off from making films for a long time. "They just took the film to bits", said Lean in a later television interview. "It really had such an awful effect on me for several years&nbsp;... you begin to think that maybe they're right. Why on earth am I making films if I don't have to? It shakes one's confidence terribly."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvB-u7vVZus|title=David Lean on the critical reaction to Ryan's Daughter|website=[[YouTube]]|date=25 June 2014 |access-date=26 July 2016|archive-date=5 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170105003914/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvB-u7vVZus|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Last years and unfulfilled projects===

====''The Lawbreakers'' and ''The Long Arm''====
From 1977 until 1980, Lean and Robert Bolt worked on a film adaptation of ''Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian'', a dramatized account by [[Richard Hough]] of the [[Mutiny on the Bounty|Mutiny on the ''Bounty'']]. It was originally to be released as a two-part film, one named ''The Lawbreakers'' that dealt with the voyage out to Tahiti and the subsequent mutiny, and the second named ''The Long Arm'' that studied the journey of the mutineers after the mutiny as well as the admiralty's response in sending out the frigate [[HMS Pandora (1779)|HMS ''Pandora'']], in which some of the mutineers were imprisoned. Lean could not find financial backing for both films after [[Warner Bros.]] withdrew from the project; he decided to combine it into one and looked at a seven-part TV series before getting backing from Italian mogul [[Dino De Laurentiis]]. The project then suffered a further setback when Bolt suffered a serious [[stroke]] and was unable to continue writing; the director felt that Bolt's involvement would be crucial to the film's success. [[Melvyn Bragg]] ended up writing a considerable portion of the script.

Lean was forced to abandon the project after overseeing casting and the construction of the $4 million ''Bounty'' replica; at the last possible moment, actor [[Mel Gibson]] brought in his friend [[Roger Donaldson]] to direct the film, as producer De Laurentiis did not want to lose the millions he had already put into the project over what he thought was as insignificant a person as the director dropping out.<ref>[http://lean.bfi.org.uk/material.php?theme=2&title=bounty] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080505070825/http://lean.bfi.org.uk/material.php?theme=2&title=bounty|date=5 May 2008}}</ref> The film was eventually released as ''[[The Bounty (1984 film)|The Bounty]]''.

====''A Passage to India''====
Lean then embarked on a project he had pursued since 1960, a film adaptation of ''[[A Passage to India (film)|A Passage to India]]'' (1984), from [[E. M. Forster]]'s [[A Passage to India|1924 novel]] of colonial conflicts in British-occupied India. Entirely shot on location in the sub-continent, this became his last completed film. He rejected a draft by [[Santha Rama Rau]], responsible for the stage adaptation and Forster's preferred screenwriter, and wrote the script himself.<ref>{{cite web|last=McGee|first=Scott|url=https://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/152548|title=A Passage to India|publisher=Turner Classic Movies|access-date=13 September 2016|archive-date=30 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160330035245/http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/152548%7C0/A-Passage-to-India.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In addition, Lean also edited the film with the result that his three roles in the production (writer, editor, director) were given equal status in the credits.<ref>[[Walter Kerr|Kerr, Walter]] (1985). [https://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30A17F8355D0C748DDDAA0894DD484D81 "Films are made in the Cutting Room"], ''[[The New York Times]]'', 17 March 1985. Online version retrieved 15 November 2007.</ref>

Lean recruited long-time collaborators for the cast and crew, including Maurice Jarre (who won another Academy Award for the score), Alec Guinness in his sixth and final role for Lean, as an eccentric Hindu Brahmin, and [[John Box]], the production designer for ''Dr. Zhivago''. Reversing the critical response to ''Ryan's Daughter'', the film opened to universally enthusiastic reviews; the film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and Lean himself nominated for three Academy Awards in [[Academy Award for Best Director|directing]], [[Academy Award for Film Editing|editing]], and [[Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay|writing]]. His female star, in the complex role of a confused young British woman who falsely accuses an Indian man of attempted rape, gained Australian actress [[Judy Davis]] her first Academy nomination. [[Peggy Ashcroft]], as the sensitive Mrs. Moore, won the Oscar for best supporting actress, making her, at 77, the oldest actress to win that award. According to Roger Ebert, it is "one of the greatest screen adaptations I have ever seen".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-passage-to-india-1984|title=A Passage to India movie review (1984)|last=Ebert|first=Roger|website=www.rogerebert.com|language=en|access-date=25 February 2020|archive-date=9 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190509053520/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-passage-to-india-1984|url-status=live}}</ref>

====''Empire of the Sun''====
He was signed on to direct a [[Warner Bros.]]-backed adaptation of [[J. G. Ballard]]'s autobiographical novel ''[[Empire of the Sun (novel)|Empire of the Sun]]'' after director [[Harold Becker]] left the project. [[Steven Spielberg]] was brought on board as a producer for Lean, but later assumed the role of director when Lean dropped out of the project; Spielberg was drawn to the idea of making the film due to his long-time admiration for Lean and his films. ''[[Empire of the Sun (film)|Empire of the Sun]]'' was released in 1987.

====''Nostromo''====
During the last years of his life, Lean was in pre-production of a film version of [[Joseph Conrad]]'s ''[[Nostromo]]''. He assembled an all-star cast, including [[Marlon Brando]], [[Paul Scofield]], [[Anthony Quinn]], [[Peter O'Toole]], [[Christopher Lambert]], [[Isabella Rossellini]] and [[Dennis Quaid]], with [[Georges Corraface]] as the title character. Lean also wanted [[Alec Guinness]] to play Dr. Monygham, but the aged actor turned him down in a letter from 1989: "I believe I would be disastrous casting. The only thing in the part I might have done well is the crippled crab-like walk." As with ''Empire of the Sun'', Steven Spielberg came on board as producer with the backing of Warner Bros., but after several rewrites and disagreements on the script, he left the project and was replaced by [[Serge Silberman]], a respected producer at Greenwich Film Productions.

The ''Nostromo'' project involved several writers, including [[Christopher Hampton]] and [[Robert Bolt]], but their work was abandoned. In the end, Lean decided to write the film himself with the assistance of Maggie Unsworth (wife of cinematographer [[Geoffrey Unsworth]]), with whom he had worked on the scripts for ''Brief Encounter'', ''Great Expectations'', ''Oliver Twist'', and ''The Passionate Friends''. Originally Lean considered filming in [[Mexico]] but later decided to film in London and [[Madrid]], partly to secure O'Toole, who had insisted he would take part only if the film was shot close to home. ''Nostromo'' had a total budget of $46 million and was six weeks away from filming at the time of Lean's death from [[Head and neck cancer|throat cancer]]. It was rumoured that fellow film director [[John Boorman]] would take over direction, but the production collapsed. ''Nostromo'' was finally adapted for the small screen with an unrelated [[BBC television]] [[Nostromo (TV serial)|mini-series]] in 1997.