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
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,