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[David Lean began his film career in close association with Noel Coward on such memorable adaptations as Blithe Spirit, In Which We Serve, Brief Encounter and This Happy Breed. Lean continued to specialize in the well-made adaptation, particularly the works of Charles Dickens. Indeed, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist are considered the finest screen renderings of Dickens. Lean has been particularly adept at obtaining precise performances from such players as Cecilia Johnson and Trevor Howard (Brief Encounter), Ralph Richardson (Breaking the Sound Barrier), John Mills and Brenda del Banzie (Hobson's Choice), and Katherin Hepburn (Summertime). During the past decade, Lean has devoted his energies to three super productions: Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago. Lean is admired by many critics for his professional discipline in an era when self-expression has too often degenerated into self indulgence.--A.S.]
Pratley: Mr. Lean, you were saying about he difficulties of getting one’s film projected correctly these days since screen sizes changed. It seems most theaters have their own ideas as to what shape it should be.
Lean: Yes. That’s true. We take a tremendous lot of trouble over compositions, and very often, I go to a theatre and the screen is quite a different shape. Quite unnecessarily so. It just takes the theatre manager’s fancy, I suppose. Or the projectionist's, I don’t know. And very often the tops of heads are cut off, or the feet are cut off or...and the whole composition altered. And it’s an awful pity. They also find it very hard to keep in focus. It always drives me mad to see stuff out of focus. You can’t really see it. You know, it’s particularly painful in long shots.
Pratley: Yes. Dr. Zhivago is a very dramatic subject and yet most directors and cinematographers I’ve spoken to claim that colour works against getting drama in a film. you are making Dr. Zhivago in colour. Wha
Lean: Well, we’re using colour in certain scenes in order to emphasize colour in the same way as one wants to emphasize silence. We have made a lot of the scenes in grays, whites, and blacks. In fact, things on the set which, in life, would be coloured, we have blown down with a spray gun to a gray. It’s completely unnoticeable, when yo see it on the screen. And I think when we really do use colour in some scenes, it will be that much more effective. So that, in other words, if you were going to make a great noise on sound it’s very good to have a great silence before it. Contrast.
Pratley: Dr. Zhivago would have seemed, at first sight, to be a completely unfilmable book. to most people, it’s also unreadable. What was there about ti which made you feel it would make a good film? Or what was it rather that attracted you to it?
Lean: Well first of all, I suppose, I have done...let’s see, I h
Pratley: Did you have to make many changes or introduce anything new?
Lean: Yes, in a sense. I mean, this writing of a film script of these great big long novels. I mean years and years ago I did two Dickens films: one, Great Expectations; and the other, Oliver Twist. And people who hadn’t read the
Pratley: Do you feel that there are too many films being adapted from novels and plays these days? Would you like to get back to an original story?
Lean: Yes. If I had the brain to be original I’d love to be original. But I haven’t. Every now and again one gets an idea that it’s mighty difficult. Well, Lawrence was pretty well original, I must say, because anybody faced with Seven Pillars of Wisdom would find it quite a tough job to make a film of, I think. And so, it is original in that way, in the same way, I think, that Dr. Zhivago is.
Pratley: Do any ideas ever come to you..into your mind about, say, life as it is, or as you see it, that you feel perhaps even if you couldn't write it yourself that you could work with someone like Robert Bolt and develop it?
Lean: I'm not mad about messages. I think that belongs to the philosophers. I think I consider myself an entertainer.
Prately: I mean, entertainment means different things to different people. I think that to be absorbed is the right word. And you can be absorbed, not necessarily by heavy, sad chronicles but by things done lightly, as, say, The Americanization of Emily, which have a great deal under the surface.
Lean: Yes. I agree with you. but we've got this in Zhivago. I mean...I think that the film industry term for it is "identification." I think lost of people will identify with the characters. They happened to be Russians in the Revolution, but I think they speak for most of us human beings. I think that's the greatness of the book.
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