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
David Lean comments: "The New York Times" film critic Bosley Crowther dismissed "Lawrence of Arabia" as "a huge, thundering camel-opera that tends to run down rather badly as it rolls on into its third hour and gets involved with sullen disillusion and political deceit". Writing about the same film in "The Village Voice", Andrew Sarris remarked that "Lawrence" was "...simply another expensive mirage, dull, overlong, and coldly impersonal... on the whole I find it hatefully calculating and condescending..." In 1974, Lean was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship. David Lean Sir David Lean (25 March 190816 April 1991) was an English film director, producer,