While not an auteur in the approved sense, David Lean had two great talents as a director, in essential aspects of the art of film – editing, and staging action in space for the camera (whether confined space of a room or endless space of desert or steppe). Overcoming the prohibitions of his strict Quaker parents, passing up college and quitting a job with his father’s accounting firm, Lean developed a passionate awe for cinema and went to work at a movie studio, working his way up from “tea boy” to film cutter, and that background marked his entire career.
In 2008 Anthony Lane wrote a great centenary remembrance of David Lean in The New Yorker, and quoted Lean’s own account of his cinematic annunciation: “I would look at that light as a pious boy might react to a shaft of sunlight in a cathedral. I still find it a slightly mystical experience. Something to do with forbidden and secret things.”
(Here is link to Lane on Lean article, if you have subscriber access. And while I’m at it, here’s link to Netflix listing of the films discussed below. Click through to read my summary of all the director’s films.)
