Lean, David

   b. 1908, Croydon; d. 1991

   Film-maker

   Lean’s career as a director was preceded by a long apprenticeship in film-making which ingrained in him a commitment to detail and quality. Despite the simplicity of Brief Encounter (1945), Lean established his ability to charge a narrative with powerful dramatic emphases. Versions of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), and later period dramas Madeleine (1950) and Hobson’s Choice (1954), show an interest in conflicting social and moral codes more evident in his later films. The late 1950s and 1960s brought the larger scale projects for which Lean is best known, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. While A Passage to India (1984) retained this sense of spectacle, his earliest works are arguably more assertive.

   ALICE E. SANGER