March 25 - David Lean

Happy Birthday, David Lean! Born today in 1908, this English film editor, screenwriter, film producer and film director is widely considered as one of the most influential directors of all time, and is mostly famous for his large-scale epics. 

  

In the 1940s, Lean started out in directing his two best known films. These included the 1945 British black and white romantic drama film 'Brief Encounter' and the 1946 British black and white drama/historical drama film 'Great Expectations'. 

  

Near the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s, Lean began directing his bigger features. 

These included the 1957 British Technicolor epic drama/war film 'The Bridge on the River Kwai', the 1962 British Technicolor epic historical drama/war film 'Lawrence Of Arabia' and the 1965 American Technicolor epic romantic drama/war film 'Doctor Zhivago'. 

  

In the mid-1980s, Lean directed the 1984 British epic historical drama film 'A Passage to India'. This was the final film of Lean's prestigious career, and the first feature-film he had directed in fourteen years, since his 1970 British epic romantic drama film 'Ryan's Daughter'. 

  

Lean's affinity for pictorialism and inventive editing techniques had led him to be lauded by directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Ridley Scott.  

    

Lean was nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director, which he won twice for 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' and 'Lawrence of Arabia'. 

Lean has seven films in the British Film Institute's Top 100 British Films (with three of them being in the top five) and was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1990.

Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound "Directors' Top Directors" poll in 2002. 

  

Lean had been active from 1942–1991. 

  

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