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 (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