David Lean (1908-1991)

Filmography & Awards | Sam Spiegel & making Lawrence | In Remembrance

  "I love making motion pictures. Working on the script is important and very necessary, but I'm not a word man, I'm a picture man. I love getting behind a camera and trying to get images on the screen. I love cutting and editing. I love putting all the parts together at the end:  the sounds, the music, the dialogue. Making a movie is the greatest excitement of my life. Afterwards, I like taking long holidays, to find the next film, and that's always difficult. I've had some marvelous times in my life, so I tend to put some of the wonderful aspects of life on the screen. If I'm a romantic, I can only say it's because I enjoy life. I love life and I don't want to die. I want to go on making movies."   CBC, Toronto; December, 1970 (recorded in New York)

David Lean was the greatest director to come out of the UK. He was the man who made Lawrence of Arabia the movie it is. The one who believed a mirage could be seen and recorded by a camera. The one willing to do anything to get the perfect shot, to set it to the perfect music. It's his vision that we see moving across the screen. And what incredible stories he has captured on film time and again. Thank you David Lean for being the innovative storyteller, hard-working, demanding man and thoughtful artist you are.

QUICK FACTS:

Born: March 25, 1908 at 38 Blenheim Crescent, Croydon, South London, United Kingdom

First film he ever saw: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1922) directed by Maurice Elvery

First time he understood there was a person behind the camera, and who that person was: when he saw The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1925) and Mare Albstrum (1926), directed by Rex Ingram

Age he decided to work in the film industry: Nineteen

First film he had anything to do with: Quinneys (1927), directed by Maurice Elvery

Number of marriages: Six

Other major film credits:  was an editor for several films, also wrote screenplays

Died: April 16, 1991 (Nostromo was to begin production that July)

QUOTES:

"David's only really passionate interest in life is films. When he's making a film, he's blind and deaf to everything else in the world. He'll sit at lunch and never utter a word. He has no small talk at any time and is terrifically difficult to get to know."

                        -- Anthony Havelock-Allan

Cinematographer, Freddie Young, calls these moments: "the David Lean stare. It's a very intense stare, and some people cannot cope with it. In some ways he's like an actor, working up to a very high pitch. Speak to him in the middle of this period of concentration and you get the 'stare'."

"he's easily the most meticulous artist in motion pictures, the most painstaking in every department"

                        -- Alec Guinness

"I think slowly, and there is nothing unusual about my methods. I envy people who receive sudden flashes of genius, because I don't. I try to work out every possible way to do a scene, and then choose the way that will surprise audiences. I live with my scripts, I live with my characters, and if I seem to be in another world when friends and unit people speak to me, it's because I don't have the scene solved yet. I'm frequently thought to be rude when I'm really in a mental turmoil, struggling with some problem that seems insuperable at the moment."

                        -- David Lean

"My admiration for him is infinite."

                        -- Katharine Hepburn

"I've never seen a man so in love with the desert."

                        -- Peter O'Toole

"I never get tired of seeing movies, or of making them." (1971)

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**These quotes are cited in and images are from Gerald Pratley's book, The Cinema of David Lean (1974). The Hepburn and O'Toole quotes are from David Lean by Stephen M. Silverman (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York 1992).