1985 Documentary on the career of director David Lean, including behind-the-scenes filming of "A Passage to India". The visual quality is not brilliant but the content is excellent.
A "complete dud" at school. Went on to become one of the worlds greatest filmmakers. There's hope for us all! Thank you for uploading this wonderful film.
MAN, Kubrick, Wyler, Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini all of them and i am sure many other great ones, were failures at school, i mean not just mediocre guys, they were real, real failures, often expelled or bullied by other students, they endured and became the greatest! always persevere with what you love!
Have to confess: as much as I love David Lean's work, to have left out any discussion of Lawrence of Arabia is disappointing. It was for me a life changing experience. Afterwards I ended up majoring in Geography and Middle East Studies. I went to the Middle East with the map from his book, travelling from Aleppo to Wadi Musa, Damascus to Baghdad. And to the Lawrence Collection in the Huntington Museum. I walked the streets of Reading, England and over the heath to Cloud's Hill and even Patrick Knowles cottage.
I knew many of the extras who worked on Ryan's Daughter and while they had a huge number of stories about the stars of the movie, one of the most humorous concerned Lean himself. Many of the crew of the movie went down with flu on one occasion and David Lean needed some one to take notes. He called out to a group of extras, many of whom were my neighbors, asking if anyone could read and write and only one man volunteered. Lean called this man forward and had just started to explain to him what he needed when the man suddenly interrupted him by asking 'I can read and write but I can't spell' 'will that be alright sir'? Lean burst out laughing which was very unusual for him and gave the man a five pound note which was equal to a days pay!
This documentary film is a kind of version of the storytelling technique of Citizen Kane. Perfectly crafted, with three documentaries interwoven, cutting back and forth with absolute mastery. This doc is almost as well edited as Lean's films.
He is still one of the all time great filmmakers .There is no one like him .A perfectionist and a professional who never compromised with the script and quality of filmmaking . This is why his movies still standout and are now textbooks for the current and upcoming filmmakers.
Wonderful to watch a master at work. He had vision and a drive most director's are lacking these days and he wasn't scared of actors egos. He was a hard task master but the work speaks for itself. Lawrence Of Arabia is a real genuine work of Art that was ever put to celluloid. Thank you Mr Lean RIP.
DIESE männer, wie auch hier in deutschland waren extrem motiviert, haben sie oftmals ca 90% ihrer schulklasse verrecken sehen. hatten wahrscheinlich schuldgefühle u wollten kompensieren.
***** SMG.John, Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, my apologies. You are certainly right about the train being the dominant form of transportation long ago, but David Lean makes the train a central part of his best set pieces. The Streinikov's soviet battle train in Zhivago, the Turkish supply train in Lawrence of Arabia and the Bridge over the River Kwai are 3 dramatic examples where it is all about the train.. There are others.. And Alec Guinness was in all of them.
+Larkinchance This is certainly true, and Lean might have had an interest in trains, but we have to take into consideration that if we look at today's garbage that Hollywood spit out like its a new coke bottle, there is always a car centralised to the movie that the characters use, specially in action or drama movies. But I do see your point of course, I am not saying I am right or something but another factor is that the train might be a symbol, of modern meets the old, sort of like a contrast, the train certainly fits the job in a lot of his films.
2:00:34 One of the reasons I became an editor was that I was so inspired by this sequence when rebroadcast on A&E channel. The other was having seen Lawrence of Arabia a few months earlier.
I have seen this documentary so many times and He is one my favorite filmmakers of all time and he is one the reason I got into film and this shows me that I can make in the film busses one the best in history thanks for posting this
That scene in which the barbed thorns of briars are used to frame the internal pains of Oliver's doomed pregnant mother in the moonlight is so simple and yet so effective...
Wish critics would be banned from making negative and damming remarks. Constructive overviews or questions about how or why should be the only focus in an effort to gain an understanding. Why damage an artist's reputation & confidence just to exhibit the critic's own egotistical viewpoint?
I wish that were so too. Unfortunately so many don't understand how to read visual language or know the literacy of what makes film what it is. You see it a lot with a filmmaker like George Lucas. He's greatly misunderstood and shunned constantly. People rarely if ever try to understand him and his intentions. It's really sad to me as they're missing out on knowing a truly exceptional filmmaker but better man.
The scenes of the filming of 'A Passage to India' are almost shocking. I admire any actor (or crew member) who can put themselves thru that & come out the other side with their artistry, passion & confidence intact. There's a kind of brutality to the way Lean makes everything & everyone--including himself--submit to the demands of his vision. Almost more astonishing than his method is the fact that what he captures on screen is so beautiful you can't imagine it has its origins in something so seemingly ugly & mechanical. Although it's also possible he was even more prone to that kind of obsessiveness on 'A Passage To India' because of the rubbishing he'd been dealt re 'Ryan's Daughter'. But it sounds from the interview with Ronald Neame & others that it's been Lean's m/o from the start. I absolutely love 'Brief Encounter' & 'Lawrence of Arabia'', but I wonder if I'll ever be able to see them in the same way, now that I 'know how the sausages are made'. Anyway...extraordinary documentary, warts & all.
00:19:05 "... And the classic Brief Encounter (1945) which won him the first Oscar nomination for any British director." Unless they are referring for a British made film we must remember that Hitchcock was nominated in 1941 for Rebecca.
er war sicherlich eine extreme significant kraft in meinen teeny jahren. danke herr lean, mögen sie ruhen in frieden. ich werde nie vergessen, sonntags, 1 mark von der omma, 15uhr, und dann O Toole, seine blauen augen auf der leinwand, closeup, ca 5x20m und die musick von Jarre, ein mentaler orgasmus, obwohl damals wusste ich nicht was das ist. ich war in LA, als sie ca 1985 die verbesserte version im ABC Entertainment Center, Century City brachten, = 3 Kinos, jedes ca 800 sitze, 8 mon, 2 bis 3 vorstellungen pro tag, AUSVERKAUFT.
Alec Guinness was totally incorrect about inserting comedy into his role because his character was essentially a deeply tragic figure. Why did he not get that? As to his comments regarding Charles Laughton, Sir Alec clearly didn't get the joke: can anyone seriously imagine Laughton's generous proportions in the context of a Japanese prisoner of war camp? C'mon.
David Lean, British filmmaker, one of the greatest movie directing in the 20th centuries, which he has made many great movies. (Including Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.) A question is what the school David Lean went, before he became a movie director.
Was the choice of Alec Guinness a good one as Professor Narayan Godbole ? ... I wonder, because it reminds me too much Peter Sellers in " The party " !! ;-)))
All film critics are aspiring but failed directors: film criticism is not even a real job. They were so vile to Lean about Ryan’s Daughter because they felt he was at a vulnerable stage in his career and so decided to rip him to shreds. Those fucking bastards. The only response that matters is the public one.
Tradução de comentário crítico sobre David Lean, escrito por David Thomson: magiadoreal.blogspot.com/2020/12/o-dicionario-biografico-de-cinema57-sir.html
Great filmmaker. Terrible, toxic person by all accounts. I'm not being a troll. Practically everyone who's worked on a set run by David Lean has delivered a scathing account of the man, calling him a bully, a lout, and just, in general, an unpleasant person to be around.
Judy Davis called Lean a bully. But he directed her to an Oscar nomination for best leading actress. I see that as meaning he pushed actors far beyond their comfort zones to get the absolute best out of them.
No doubt the man was a genius, but he had his faults as do we all. Apparantly he hated actors, especially British ones. He felt they were all self absorbed. Still, he has nothing on John Ford. Read and watch about him. My Lord.
2:12:17 Just because Ryan's Daughter has a woman's emotional life as its focus does not mean its third rate 'romance novel' material as Spielberg suggests. We've been battling against this bullshit perception in movies for decades, the idea of great cinema being the story of men in action packed landscapes (where women function as nothing more than 'the sexy girlfriend') and women's films being deemed of lower quality and disparaged as 'chick flicks' which can't possibly be taken seriously. James Cameron's Titanic subverted this brilliantly because it managed to be not only an action packed spectacle but, like Ryan's Daughter, was focused on the emotional life of a woman. So Spielberg can take his smug, condescending assessment and shove it: it's not for nothing that his movies feature no interesting female characters, he doesn't understand or even like them and his lack of insight into an essential part of the human condition makes him a lesser artist.
The aspect of RD that didn't work was the depiction of that romance. Chris Jones was unable to 'deliver' due to personal problems. Sarah Miles and he were miscast and that scene didn't work. IT was a great pity because the film is a masterpiece. Irish people being depicted as 'rent a mob' was maybe OTT.
M White that’s not true. Chris Jones played the reality of a shell shocked soldier brilliantly and it is his fragility emotionally which attracts Rosy.
@@partridge9698 she had a dependable strong husband with Robert Mitchum’s character though. She wasn’t looking for security she was looking for passion.
Alec really should have kept his mouth shut on KWAI! LEAN made Alec a star and gave him his career! ALEC isnt directing this movie! DAVID is.. so causing problems on the film like that and going against Davids directing really is not called for! and Alec should have known better!!! down right Rude really...
