David Lean - biography

“When the great actor says the line, you can put the scissors precisely at the point A and it’s wonderful.  When the star says the line, you hold for four frames longer because something else happens.”

“I’m first and foremost interested in the story, the characters.”

“I’ve just begun to dare to think I perhaps am a bit of an artist.”

“Film is a dramatised reality and it is the director’s job to make it appear real...  an audience should not be conscious of technique.”

“No one caught on that Ryan’s Daughter was actually an adaptation of Madame Bovary.”

“Don’t make jokes about food.”

“I rather like mysteries.  But I do dislike muddles.”

“I think people remember pictures not dialogue.  That’s why I like pictures.”

David Lean directed the following films:
In Which We Serve (1942)
This Happy Breed (1944)
Blithe Spirit (1945)
Brief Encounter (1945)
Great Expectations (1946)
Oliver Twist (1948)
The Passionate Friends (1949)
Madeleine (1950)
The Sound Barrier (1952)
Hobson’s Choice (1954)
Summertime (1955)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Ryan’s Daughter (1970)
A Passage to India (1984)


David Lean contributed to the screenplay for the following films:
This Happy Breed (1944)
Brief Encounter (1945)
Great Expectations (1946)
Oliver Twist (1948)
The Passionate Friends (1949)
Hobson’s Choice (1954)
Summertime (1955)
A Passage to India (1984)