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0ver the four decades of his directorial career, David Lean (1908-1991 ) fell in and out of critical favor, but he was always highly regarded by fellow filmmakers. Whether it was for intimate dramas of human relationships like This Happy Breed and Brief Encounter or widescreen adventure spectacles like The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, Lean was widely acclaimed as a director with remarkable pictorial gifts and a flair for uniquely cinematic means of narrative expression. Those who worked with him also noted his often maddening sense of perfectionism, a willingness to do virtually anything to get the shot he wanted. David Lean was truly a filmmaker's filmmaker, and one whose work inspired several succeeding generations. As Steven Spielberg has commented, "I don't know of one director who doesn't go down on one knee when The Bridge on the River Kwai or Lawrence of Arabia is discussed." It's therefore not surprising that all but one of David Lean's sixteen feature films are available on video, with eleven available in the technically superior laserdisc format.
Lean began his film career in 1927 as a teenaged assistant at the Gaumont Studio outside London, where he gained production experience in several different departments before finally deciding to specialize in film editing. He soon became renowned as a "film doctor" whose talents could salvage a flawed project, and within less than a decade he had become the British film industry's most sought after film editor. Although he exercised considerable directorial influence on films such as Pygmalion (1938) and Major Barbara (1941), Lean's first official directorial credit came on In Which We Serve (1942), which he co-directed with Noel Coward.
This wartime propaganda film ironically derives its morale-boosting qualities from the depiction of a British naval disaster, recounting "the story of a ship," HMS Torrin, from its construction and commissioning, through several combat encounters, to its sinking by German aircraft. The bulk of the film dramatizes the flashback reminiscences of crew members as they cling to a life raft. Each of the various domestic situations portrayed, which reflect a patriotically requisite cross section of social classes, embody that typically British stiff-upper-lip sentimental reserve, so the film is, of course, brimming with emotion. Lean's touch is particularly evident in the editing, including an opening montage of the ship's construction, a later battle sequence which traces the lengthy voyage of a shell from the ship’s hold to the gun emplacement on deck, and the deft inter-weaving of studio scenes with archival combat footage.
Following two more Noel Coward adaptations, This Happy Breed (1944) and Blithe Spirit (1945), Lean really hit his artistic stride with Brief Encounter (1945), which won him his first Academy Award nomination as Best Director, the first for any British filmmaker. The film is a liberal adaptation of a one-act Coward play which recounts a chance encounter at a train station refreshment stand between a suburban housewife. Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson), and a married doctor, Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard i, which blossoms into a romance. The story, structured as a flashback, is narrated by Laura and thus emphasizes her enjoyment of this burst of romantic attention in the midst of a rather dull married life, as well as her conflicted emotional struggle with these unexpected passions and the temptation of an adulterous affair.
Lean's sensitive direction, the marvelously nuanced performances of Johnson and Howard, and the emotionally resonant use of the surging chords of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, combine to produce a delicate but always credible portrayal of grand passions reigned in by this middle class, married (with children) woman's realization that she must "be sensible." In terms of Lean's increasing mastery of cinematic technique, Brief Encounter is especially notable for its unusual lighting effects, long lap dissolves which frame the flashbacks, some expressionistic editing that conveys Laura's emotions, and the dramatically effective use of a bookended pair of slowly shifting Dutch tilt camera angles that emphasize one of the film's emotional high points.
The Voyager laserdisc features a supplementary audio commentary by film historian Bruce Eder. Although he has some perceptive comments on the film's use of sound effects and music, Eder has relatively little to say about the film's other cinematic qualities, offers little in the way of ideological analysis of the film in terms of either class or male-female relations, and spends most of the time giving career biographies of the film's collaborators, including Lean, Noel Coward, Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, and even Sergei Rachmaninoff.
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