David Lean’s “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) and “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), have become the director’s signature movies, but one unfortunate result of their towering presence is that they have effectively blocked our view of the gorgeous landscape of Lean’s earlier work. The domestic comedies, romances, Noel Coward and Dickens adaptations, together amounting to almost a dozen movies made in the 1940s and ’50s, give vivid proof of Lean’s mastery of the medium and his evolving preoccupation with iconoclasts%u2014women, especially%u2014who buck the system for a chance at love and self-assertion.
On October 10, the American Cinematheque kicked off “These Mad Places: The Epic Cinema of David Lean” to run through November 2. The series showcases the full range of Lean’s offerings, from his widescreen bonanzas to little-known rarities like “The Passionate Friends” (1949) and “Madeleine” (1950).
Among his overshadowed gems is “Blithe Spirit” (1945; screening November 2), a domestic screwball farce, courtesy of Noel Coward and dressed in elegant Lean style. It’s an exuberant paranormal fable, cheeky in that peculiarly British way in which manners and class tincture the humor. The comic whirlwind, Margaret Rutherford, plays a medium hired to stage a séance at the home of a daft writer (played with comic élan by Rex Harrison) where she accidentally summons his dead ex-wife. Sparkling repartee and much mischief follow as the ghost, jealous of the writer’s new wife, tries to get rid of her. The movie unravels the skein of infidelities, jealousy and marital discord that entangle them and, in that sense, stays true to Lean’s love for pricking the passions that lie just beneath his stories’ calm surfaces. “Blithe” is ingeniously goofy by any standards, worth seeing just to see Rutherford riding her bicycle like a charging fury and capering about giddily at the mere mention of ghosts.
While “Blithe” is all Technicolor charm, Lean’s Dickens adaptations are gothic, moody, and blessed with the most accomplished black-and-white cinematography I’ve ever seen. “Great Expectations” (1946) has critically been the more celebrated of the two (some critics hailing it as among the greatest movies ever made), but, for my money, “Oliver Twist” (1948; screening November 1) easily equals its companion, and, for its deliciously bleak imagery, surpasses it. Both movies feature sequences that function as glorious testaments to the power of pure cinema. The snap of a bitter wind and the lapping of oars are all that punctuate the sequence of Pip’s harried flight along a marshy river in “Expectations.” The stormy-night opening of “Oliver Twist,” similarly, in which a woman stumbles along the moors, creaking with bare trees and lashed by lightning, hurls us into a cascade of the movie’s startling imagery. The late ’40s allowed for the flowering of Lean’s clear-eyed, crystalline aesthetic, as well as for his ability to plumb into darker human territory. To find the love they seek, Pip and Oliver both must break free of a cycle of greed, deceit and societal barriers thrust upon them. Lean tackled a variation on this theme, this tension between our inner and outer worlds, a year earlier in his now-legendary romance, “Brief Encounter” (1945).
An intimate study of love at odds with duty, “Encounter” gives us two married strangers%u2014a housewife and a doctor%u2014who, in spite of better judgment, fall for each other, then must weigh whether and how to continue their affair. Its themes of self-doubt, regret and longing can still be heard today%u2014″Before Sunrise” and “Lost in Translation” both bear its note of pining and loneliness in a hurly-burly world%u2014and they clearly resonated with Lean for, ten years later, he made “Summertime” (1955; screening October 30). With its exquisite color photography, “Summertime” counterpoints “Encounter’s” rapturous black-and-white while presenting its characters with a similar paradox. Shot on sumptuous Venetian locales, “Summertime” gives us a lonely American spinster (played tenderly by Katherine Hepburn) who must choose between her romantic desires and “knowing when to leave the party” after she and a married Italian shop owner (Rossano Brazzi) fall in love. It’s a heartsick movie about missed opportunities%u2014something Lean suggests repeatedly, whether it’s through a flower that floats just out of arm’s reach, or a gift that never reaches the recipient’s hands. More than its romance, though, “Summertime” draws its appeal through its portrayal of a woman discovering her self-worth and sense of identity.
Feminine self-assertion was a theme not new to Lean. A year earlier, he’d explored it in zany comedic fashion in his grossly underrated “Hobson’s Choice” (1954; screening October 19). What seems superficially like a showcase for the formidable genius of Charles Laughton turns out to be a crowd-pleaser about female liberation. Here, a boot shop owner-widower keeps a despotic grip over his household and is righteously flummoxed when his eldest daughter flies the coup and commandeers a life for herself. It’s satisfying, sharply acted stuff that, judging from its shimmering, beautifully textured black-and-white, takes it cue visually from Lean’s Dickens adaptations. While we laugh at Laughton’s blustering, stamping, drunken tirades, we come away treasuring the image of the poised Brenda De Banzie defying the boot of the boastful, blubbering old cad.
Lean has no peer in movies these days. In an age when our most celebrated filmmakers are often purveyors of hip irony and reconstituted razzle-dazzle, it’s refreshing to find someone of truly world-class stature. Critics have long disputed Lean’s relative significance in the canon of cinema’s masters, but few filmmakers have so consistently balanced brilliant technique with stories that feel so avidly human and honest. How do Lean’s movies hold up in today’s action-movie climate? How well do they hang together, and what do they reveal of their author’s voice? These are tantalizing questions that the Cinematheque’s tribute invites us to answer for ourselves.