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Thu, Sep 25, 2008
The Wexner Center is devoting a monthlong retrospective in October to the films of David Lean, giant among British filmmakers and the director of Lawrence of Arabia (shown here in 70mm) and The Bridge On the River Kwai. The 11-film series Retrospective: David Lean kicks off with the 1946 film Great Expectations on October 2.
Whether confined to a studio sound stage or leading a production team through a tropical jungle or barren desert, David Lean (1908-1991) has created some of the most breathtaking and brilliantly composed images ever committed to celluloid. One of the most accomplished and revered of British filmmakers, Lean is most often identified with Oscar-winning, grand-scale spectacles such as The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia. Many of Lean’s projects, however, were relatively modest, studio-based films such as Brief Encounter, and his two Dickens adaptations Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. Click http://www.wexarts.org/fv/?seriesid=205 for a complete schedule of these films and more at the Wex.
The September 14 issue of New York Times wrote a feature on Lean’s work and technique on the occasion of a similar retrospective in New York, noting: “the precise editing, the elegant compositions, the smooth camera movements, the unimpeachable performances. The madness in his method is what gives his work its quivering, almost alarming life.” Read the entire piece here. Wexner Center film curator Dave Filipi calls Lawrence of Arabia “the best film of its kind. Big, beautiful, but also deceptively poetic.” Filipi continues, “It’s more of an experience than a film — especially on the big screen and in 70mm.”
Schedule of Films:
Thursday, October 2
DOUBLE FEATURE
7 pm: Great Expectations (1946). 118 mins.
9:10 pm: Brief Encounter (1945). 86 mins.
Lean’s Great Expectations ranks as one of the very best Dickens adaptations, alongside the director’s 1948 Oliver Twist. This telling of Pip’s life and encounters with such memorable characters as Miss Havisham and Magwitch is notable for the Oscar-winning visuals of cinematographer Guy Green and production designer John Bryan. With John Mills, Alec Guinness. Brief Encounter, an often-adapted tale of an unconsummated love affair, is the film that brought Lean his first international attention. Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard star as a housewife and doctor who meet and continue to rendezvous in a railway station. Based on a short Noël Coward play titled Still Life.
Friday, October 10
7 pm: Lawrence of Arabia (1962). 216 mins, 70 mm.
The film that launched a thousand filmmakers, Lawrence of Arabia is Lean’s poetic and epic interpretation of T. E. Lawrence’s life as he leads the Arabian campaign against the Turks during World War I. The winner of seven Oscars, including Best Picture, it stars Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, and Anthony Quinn. Here’s what the director himself had to say about the film’s 1989 restoration and re-release: "Everyone worried about re-releasing Lawrence. They said the audiences have changed, that they talk and shout at the screen, that they’re impatient and wouldn’t go for it. Not at all. You could hear a pin drop. London, New York, Washington, Los Angeles. I think the audiences had almost forgotten the power of pictures."—David Lean
Sunday, October 12
2 pm: Summertime (1955). 100 mins.
Summertime was Lean’s favorite out of all of his films. It stars Katherine Hepburn as a lonely secretary from Akron on vacation in Venice who thinks she has found love in the arms of the charming (but married) Rossano Brazzi. Said Hepburn later, "My admiration for David is infinite."
Friday, October 17
7 pm: Oliver Twist (1948). 115 mins.
9:10 pm: Blithe Spirit (1945). 95 mins.
See how Lean takes on adaptations of Charles Dickens and Noël Coward in newly restored prints. Dickens’s dark vision of Victorian London has never looked better than in Lean’s adaptation of Oliver Twist. With Robert Newton, John Howard Davies, and Alec Guinness in his controversial portrayal of Fagin, his second major role. A rare comedy by Lean, Blithe Spirit stars Rex Harrison as a cynical novelist whose current marriage is disrupted by the ghost of his first wife, visible only to him. Noël Coward wrote the script from his own 1941 play.
Saturday, October 18
7 pm: In Which We Serve (1942). 114 mins.
9:05 pm: This Happy Breed (1944). 110 mins.
Lean’s directorial debut and one of the most revered films in British film history, In Which We Serve was produced to boost England’s morale during WWII. Codirected, written by, and starring Noël Coward, it tells the history of HMS Torrin and her crew through flashback after the destroyer is sunk by Luftwaffe bombers. This Happy Breed tells the story of a middle-class suburban London family in the years between World War I and the outbreak of World War II. Adapted from a play by Noël Coward.
Friday, October 24
7:30 pm: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). 161 mins.
Winner of seven Academy Awards, The Bridge on the River Kwai stars Alec Guinness as an increasingly unstable British commander in a Second World War P.O.W. camp. As Guinness directs his men to build a proper railway bridge for their Japanese captors, a team of commandoes led by a camp escapee (William Holden) travels through the jungle to blow it up. Also with Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Hawkins.
Thursday, October 30
7 pm: The Sound Barrier (1952). 116 mins.
9:05 pm: The Passionate Friends (1948). 91 mins.
See two of Lean’s lesser known works in freshly restored prints. Starring Ralph Richardson and Ann Todd (Lean’s third of six wives), The Sound Barrier is a fictionalized account of a British aircraft magnate’s quest to push the limits of aviation technology at all costs. At the U.S. premiere, a bemused Chuck Yeager had to explain to some who took the film as gospel that the Americans (specifically, Yeager) broke the sound barrier. One of the least known of Lean’s films, The Passionate Friends offers a wonderful companion piece to Brief Encounter. Ann Todd stars as a woman whose comfortable life with a banker (Claude Rains) is shaken when her first love, played by Trevor Howard, reappears in her life.
GENERAL INFORMATION: Tickets for each film are $7 for the general public, $5 for Wexner Center members, students, and senior citizens, and $3 for children under 12. For tickets call (614) 292-3535 or visit www.ticketmaster.com. Most screenings are at 7pm, and all are in the Wexner Center’s Film/ Video Theater, located at 1871 North High St. For more information visit www.wexarts.org.
Note: To honor the centenary of Lean’s birth, the first ten films he directed (eight of them shown at the Wex) have been restored by the BFI National Archive and Granada International, in association with Studio Canal, and with the generous support of the David Lean Foundation.
Series and Season Support:
Retrospective: David Lean is presented in Association with BFI.
Significant contributions for the Wexner Center’s 2008–09 film/video season are made by the Rohauer Collection Foundation.
All film/video programs and events also receive support from Corporate Annual Fund of the Wexner Center Foundation and Wexner Center members, as well as from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, The Columbus Foundation, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council.
