David Lean: A Biography [Paperback]

Kevin Brownlow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1997

The life and its biographer provide a landmark work on the cinema. Emerging from a childhood of nearly Dickensian darkness, David Lean found his great success as a director of the appropriately titled Great Expectations.

There followed his legendary black-and-white films of the 1940s and his four-film movie collaboration with Noel Coward. Lean's 1955 film Summertime took him from England to the world of international moviemaking and the stunning series of spectacular color epics that would gain for his work twenty-seven Academy Awards and fifty-six Academy Award nominations. All are classics, including The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India.

Kevin Brownlow, a film editor in his own right and author of the seminal silent film trilogy initiated with The Parade's Gone By. . ., brings to Lean's biography an exhaustive knowledge of the art and the industry.

One learns about the making of movies as realized by a master, but also of the highly personal costs of genius. The troubled Quaker family from which Lean came influenced his relationship with his son, his brother, and his six wives. Yet he showed in his work a deep understanding of humanity.

The vastness of this scholarly and entertaining enterprise is augmented by sixteen pages of scenes from Lean's color films, thirty-two pages from his black-and-white movies, and throughout the text a vast number of photographs from his life and location work.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

David Lean directed a number of grand films, among them "The Bridge Over the River Kwai", "Lawrence of Arabia," "Dr. Zhivago," "Ryan's Daughter," and "A Passage to India." Despite the length and breadth of these movies, he meticulously arranged virtually every shot. The results, of course, are some of the most enduring works ever put on film. This tribute to Lean, who died in 1991, is told in Lean's own words and in the words of those who knew him best. It is a comprehensive look at the director and his often combative relationships. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Best known as the director of such epic films as Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Doctor Zhivago, British filmmaker David Lean (1908-1991) enjoyed a long and distinguished career. In turn, this volume, begun as an autobiography told to Brownlow, has been wrought by its author, a noted film historian (The Parade's Gone By...) and documentarian, into an epic account of an epic life. Coming from a stifling middle-class family who frowned on movies, Lean worked his way up through the lowest ranks of British cinema to become a top editor, then a director. The narrative here, based largely on interviews with those who knew Lean, and including long excerpts from Lean's correspondence, centers on extensive anecdotal accounts of the making of Lean's films. Brownlow shows that each one, including Lean's great films of the 1940s and '50s like Brief Encounter, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, as well as the epic masterpieces, arose from a messy tangle of artistic ambition, dodgy finances, obsessive perfectionism, clashing egos and unforeseen contingencies. Brownlow's 90 pages on the contentious production of Lawrence of Arabia are unsurpassed by any other account. Even his descriptions of the flops and failed projects, such as Lean's attempt to film the story of the Bounty mutiny, are fascinating and instructive. Indeed, this book is as much an education in the realities of filmmaking as it is a biography. But ultimately, it is Lean's personality?charming, insecure, stubborn, maddeningly heedless of the feelings of others and, above all, brilliant?that dominates the text. The book's flaws?too much detail about Lean's tortuous love life; a lack of critical analysis of the films themselves?are serious but forgivable. As a movie insider's affectionate, admiring but unblinkered look at a great director, this is a magnificent, essential work. Photos and filmography. First serial to Cineaste magazine.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st US ed. edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312168101
• ISBN-13: 978-0312168100
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.9 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,037,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Covering All Phases of a Fascinating and Complicated Genius, January 24, 2002

By 

William Hare (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: David Lean: A Biography (Hardcover)

Kevin Brownlow touched all bases of David Lean's life, providing insight into the films and his unconventionally fascinating life, making this one of the finest film biographies I have ever read about a cinema giant about whom I had longed to learn more about. Brownlow divides Lean's career into two distinct phases, 1) the British period in which he worked at home and captured the true essence of his people and, 2) the international phase in which the master film craftsman lived in hotels and moved from one country to another in producing a series of internationally spectacular movies such as "Lawrence of Arabia", "Doctor Zhivago" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

Brownlow begins with Lean's roots as a restless youngster in the London suburb of Croydon. His lack of curiosity and penchant for traditional school learning coupled with the stolen hours he spent sitting inside darkened theaters in a state of fascination revealed where his adult years would be spent.

Once that Lean began following his dream he quickly became established as Britain's foremost film editor. In that context Brownlow expunges a canard that was carried all the way to obituaries after the great director's death in 1990 that Noel Coward gave the aspiring director a leg up in teaming up with him to co-direct the brilliantly done war film about the British Navy, "In Which We Serve," in which Coward also starred along with Celia Johnson and John Mills. It turned out that Coward's move proved to his personal benefit as Lean did most of the directing and Coward was concerned mainly about his own scenes, after which he would generally leave the set, entrusting the basic direction of the film to Lean. We also learn that Lean, unlike Sir Carol Reed and other prominent British directors, turned down a chance to begin his directing career on low budget "quota quickies," deciding instead to wait for a major opportunity, which came with "In Which We Serve." Later that same year one of Lean's greatest films, the epic love story "Brief Encounter" with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, hit the screens and the young director's career was away in a flourish.

After achieving prominent worldwide status as a great international director, Lean's sensitivity resulted in overreacting to the criticism of tart New Yorkers at a Round Table session at the Algonquin Hotel. Lean was sharply criticized for "Ryan's Daughter," which American critics such as Richard Schickel and Pauline Kael believed was well below the high standard he established with "Brief Encounter" and continued with other films. According to Brownlow, Lean was sufficiently wounded to take a sabbatical before doing his last film, the highly acclaimed Indian epic "Passage to India" based on the E.M. Forster literary classic.

Brownlow does a superb job of depicting the period and the films from Lean's prolific career. Lean's was a mastery of style and entertainment, enriching story telling with beautiful visual imagery and word economy in the best sense, making the language all the more meaningful. This book does his career justice while enhancing our knowledge of a great man.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brownlow's magisterial biography is a landmark in the field., April 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: David Lean: A Biography (Hardcover)

Kevin Brownlow's "David Lean: A Biography" is a landmark in the field of cinema studies. In this work, the premier cinema historian in the English language meets arguably the greatest English director, and the result is a masterpiece of the genre worthy of the maker of such film masterpieces as "Brief Encounter," "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Lawrence of Arabia." Brownlow's understanding of the technical aspects of film-making does great justice to Lean's career, who himself made his reputation in the industry as an editor, gaining renown as the premier "cutter" of his time. In my estimation, Lean was arguably the premier "technician-style" director, a master of cinematic form rivalled only by Stanley Kubrick. My pantheon of directors includes more "personal" directors, Bergman, Fellini and Tarkovsky, yet I respect the accomplishments of Lean; when I saw "Brief Encounter" on the big screen, the climax of the film literally stunned me. The awesome construction of "Brief Encounter" perhaps could only have been created by a director possessing technical genius bred in the cutting room, and it is a great credit to Brownlow that he makes us fully understand the genesis of Lean's particular genius for film. While in these 800-pages, Brownlow does not slight the more conventional aspects of movies, e.g, personalities, finance, criticism, etc., it is his commanding knowledge of film as a craft that gives us great insight into Lean. This book should be required reading for film students for the insight it gives into the craft of constructing a motion picture. Finally, "David Lean: A Biography" is also an insightful story about an unusual man with a marvellously contradictory character who would make a great protagonist in a work of fiction. Lean was, in turns, a sensualist with a Quaker background who had six wives, marrying many of them when most men, it was said, would be divorcing them; a director who commanded huge crews who essentially was a lonely and uncommunicative man; a man of extraordinary generosity who would deny a fellow professional a minor credit; an artist of international reputation who could be wounded mortally by a bad review by an insignificant critic, whose career was derailed by the storm of negative criticism over "Ryan's Daughter." Brownlow's portrait of the essentially unintellectual Lean, an insecure man tormented by a rivalry with his younger brilliant brother, himself a brilliant technician working in a medium with great artistic pretensions who was uncertain of his worth and reputation, should not be missed by any person who loves film. Lean's eclipse after the critical debacle of "Ryan's Daughter," his years in the woods in which he tried in vain to bring new projects to fruition that later were realized by other, lesser directors, his ultimate return to glory and respectability with "A Passage to India," and his final years as the respected yet still tormented man searching for the backing for his last project, "Nostromo," kick this book out of its genre into the ranks of the best biographies in which the life of which we read informs us not just about the human condition, but about ourselves. Don't miss this book

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic ... but forgotten treasure, January 23, 2005

By 

M. Harris "Mike Harris" (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: David Lean: A Biography (Paperback)

What a pity it is when "biographies" of no-talent flashes-in-the-pan like Madonna, Ashley Simpson, Brittney Spears, ad naseum, are ubiquitous, but Kevin Brownlow's fascinating and throughly-researched biography of a true genius is out of print. What does this say about our culture's priorities? Not much. Oh well . . . fortunately a few copies of this marvelous book survive. If you're interested in great movies ("Lawrence of Arabia," "Doctor Zhivago," "Summertime," "Great Expectation," etc.), great stars (O'Toole, Sharif, Katherine Hepburn, William Holden, Robert Mitchum, and a host of other great stars -- AND great actors), or, perhaps, one of the greatest film directors of the twentieth (and probably any other) century, do whatever you have to do, but grab up a copy of "David Lean: A Biography" as quickly as you can before the remaining copies disappear altogether.