HE PAINTS A CANVAS BIGGER THAN MICHELANGELO EVER SAW, AND HE RETAINS THE HEART AND TOUCH OF A POET. AFTER FIVE YEARS OF PREPARATION, HE'S GOING BACK ON LOCATION ONCE MORE. AND EVERYTHING LEAN IS BIG AGAIN.

It would seem that everybody's made up their minds about David Lean.

To most moviegoers, he's the man behind four decades of first-class entertainment: skillful adaptations of the works of Charles Dickens (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist), subtly passionate romances (Brief Encounter, Summertime) and a trio of lavish, wide-screen productions (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago) that gave epic filmmaking a scope and sophistication rarely seen since the silent era.

This list of achievements marks Lean as the director's director par excellence. Lavishing years of preparation on carefully chosen and executed projects, he is the man who'll go to any length to get it right.

Yet behind this image of a mainstream filmmaker, adapting classic works of literature, low-key character studies and scrupulous re-creations of historical incidents, something remains unaccounted for. And the only word for it is poetry.
Anyone looking at what's up on the screen can't deny that the credit "David Lean's Film of" has real meaning. For just as with his British peers (and rivals) Michael Powell and Alfred Hitchcock, the Lean label marks the contributions of many orchestrated by one man alone. More importantly, that view looks well beyond the (for Lean) easily achieved demands of narrative structure and character delineation. For as much as Lean tells stories and presents characters, he gives us images and sounds even more in all their purity, complexity and interplay.

It's here we find the images of glass and ice (so sharp, they seem almost etched on the screen) that overwhelm Zhivago--giving its painfully simple love story an almost mythic force. That cold white world contrasts harshly with the hot yellow one of Lawrence, where the textures of the desert landscape make the hero's search for himself seem to take place in a pitiless void of space and time. And then there are the moments when Lean reaches toward the uncanny, as in A Passage to India, where a combination of images-Miss Quested's gasp followed by the sight of an elephant bathing in a watering trough-makes the mystery of Forster's \Iarabar Caves, a living metaphor of sex and death, absolutely clear.

Lean began his film career as an editor (his credits in that field include Pygmalion and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing) and, in a real sense, he never left it. For the ceaseless combining of images and sounds-both between and within shots-mark the true nature of his art.

In one of the pieces that follow, Robert Bolt goes out of his way to lay claim to the famous shot of Peter O'Toole blowing out a match in Lawrence of Arabia, followed by a shot of sunrise over the desert. Bolt is more than within his rights to complain. Yet on another level, it's beside the point, for Lean's films- Bolt-written or not-overflow with such moments.
Early on in A Passage to India (a film for which Lean himself wrote the script, but more importantly carries the unprecedented credit "Directed and Edited by David Lean"), a shot of an Indian beggar coughing in his sleep as he lies in a pile of other beggars is followed by one of an Indian band striking up martial music for the arrival of a high British official. There's more than a wealth/poverty juxtaposition going on here, for the beggar's cough gives the band its downbeat. Here is one of the film's major themes-Indian poverty making British Imperialism all the more powerful. And yet, Lean lets the moment go by so swiftly, so unemphatically, most viewers are likely to miss it the first time out. A similar effect occurs in the scene of Mrs. Moore's (Peggy Ashcroft) death, where Lean's supple editing makes it appear as if she's drowning in the stars that are passing over her head

It's in moments like these that viewers become aware that David Lean is making films not only to last, but to be seen again and again. The rigor and beauty of these images can be matched in the works of filmmakers as diverse as Robert Bresson, Maya Deren, Yasujiro Ozu and Luchino Visconti. The wonder is Lean's ability to address such audiovisual poetry to the largest possible number of spectators.

In honoring David Lean, we honor nothing less than the full potential of fictional narrative filmmaking. And in doing so, we also cite a "Life Achievement" that, thanks to the forthcoming production of Nostromo, is still very much in progress.
Set to begin shooting this month (the month of his 82nd birthday), he is holding all calls except those from Marlon Brando, who is tentatively set to star. -David Ehrenstein

Five years ago, the faculty and students of the AFI spoke with Lean shortly after the release of his latest work, A Passage to India, in 1984. The director spent an afternoon at the institute, where, after a screening of Passage he spoke openly about his work, his life and his vision.

QUESTION : Since we are here with young men and women who have a passion to make films, they have, as one says, caught the fever. When did you catch this fever?

LEAN:: I was brought up in the suburbs of London. I hated them. I was also brought up in a rather strict Quaker family. I wasn't allowed to go to the cinema. We had quite a big house-a kitchen and a basement-and we had what was known in those days as a charwoman, somebody who swept the floors and did the rough work. She was called Mrs. Edgerton. Mrs. Edgerton was absolutely mad about the cinema and, as I wasn't allowed to go, she used to tell me about it. The thing that really first hooked me was when she told me about Charlie Chaplin. She used to imitate Charlie Chaplin very well by running ,round the kitchen table and skidding and twirling the cane. I used to roll around with laughter. I remember saying to her once, "When they talk, what happens?" And she said, "Oh, it comes up on the screen in writing." I said, "Well, that must look ridiculous." She said, "No, it doesn't. It works." That's when I first got the bug.

When I finally was allowed to go to the cinema, one of the first films I saw was Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro. I'll never forget the sword fights and the villain grasping his head, taking his hand away, and there was a huge Z on his forehead. It was magic to me. If you knew what the London suburbs were like, you will understand-it was very, very gray, and the movies were a journey into another world.

I was absolutely hopeless at school and when I finished-I was just 19-my father said, "You better come into the office." I went to this damned office in the city of London with a bowler hat, striped trousers and black coat as a chartered accountant. Awful. I stayed there for about a year. One day I went home, and my mother- my father had gone some time ago-and my mother said, "Oh, Aunt Edith was here this afternoon. She said, 'I don't see any accountancy magazines here. I only see film magazines. Why doesn't he go into the movies?' "

I was overawed by movies. I thought they were so wonderful, literally a dream world. I never thought one could go into them. I applied to a place that is now a television studio. I said, "I'll do anything, carry tea, anything." They said, "Well, we'll take you on for two weeks. If, at the end of it, you seem to be promising, we'll take you on at five pounds a week." And they did. I remember going into the camera department first of all. I remember going up to an old Bell and Howell camera and saying, "What has that done?" And they said, Roses of Picardy. This is a film I'd seen-silent, of course. And I remember touching their camera. I couldn't believe that this was the source of all the magic, you know.