David Lean David Lean Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, responsible for large-scale epics such as "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) and "A Passage to India" (1984). He also directed adaptations of Charles Dickens novels "Great Expectations" (1946) and "Oliver Twist" (1948), and the romantic drama "Brief Encounter" (1945). Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's "In Which We Serve", which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with "Summertime" in
Peggy Ashcroft (1960), The Duchess of Malfi (1961), Emilia in "Othello" (1961) and Ranevskaya in "The Cherry Orchard", opposite Gielgud as Gaev. These were generally well reviewed, but her performance in "The Wars of the Roses" in 1963 and 1964 had the critics searching for superlatives. The production was a reshaping of Shakespeare's three "Henry VI" plays and "Richard III". Ashcroft, then aged fifty-six, played Margaret of Anjou, ageing from blithe youth to ferocious old age as the plays progressed. The critic Philip Hope-Wallace wrote of: At about this time Ashcroft's third and last marriage was beginning to fall apart. According to