David Lean 1955, Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios; in 1970, however, the critical failure of his film "Ryan's Daughter" led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he planned a number of film projects which never came to fruition. In 1984 he had a career revival with "A Passage to India", adapted from E. M. Forster's novel; it was an instant hit with critics but proved to be the last film Lean would direct. Lean's affinity for striking visuals and inventive editing techniques has led him to be lauded by directors
Peggy Ashcroft time. She also appeared at the Royal Court in Duras's "The Lovers of Viorne" (1971) in the role of a schizophrenic killer, a performance that the young Helen Mirren found so accomplished that "I just wanted to rush out and start all over again". Many were surprised when Ashcroft appeared with Richardson at the Savoy in 1972 in what was by all appearances a conventional West End drawing room comedy, "Lloyd George Knew My Father", by William Douglas-Home, but the two stars revealed unexpected depths in their characters. For the National, Ashcroft appeared in Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman", Beckett's "Happy