David Lean Filmography

Lost and Found: The Story of Cook's Anchor

Crew: Director

Ryan's Daughter

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, Sarah Miles, Christopher Jones, John Mills

Synopsis: The logic behind inflating Robert Bolt's minimalist romantic drama Ryan's Daughter into a 12-million-dollar epic seems to have been "When David Lean directs, it's a super-spectacular." Sarah Miles (who at the time was married to Robert Bolt) stars as Rosy, the daughter of Irish pub keeper Tom Ryan Read More

Doctor Zhivago

Crew: Director

Actors: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness

Synopsis: Based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago covers the years prior to, during, and after the Russian Revolution, as seen through the eyes of poet/physician Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif). In the tradition of Russian novels, a multitude of characters and subplots Read More

Lawrence of Arabia

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, Claude Rains

Synopsis: This sweeping, highly literate historical epic covers the Allies' mideastern campaign during World War I as seen through the eyes of the enigmatic T. E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole, in the role that made him a star). After a prologue showing us Lawrence's ultimate fate, we flash back to Cairo in 1917. Read More

The Bridge on the River Kwai

Crew: Director

Actors: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, Geoffrey Horne, James Donald

Synopsis: The Bridge on the River Kwai opens in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma in 1943, where a battle of wills rages between camp commander Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) and newly arrived British colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness). Saito insists that Nicholson order his men to build a bridge Read More

Summertime

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi, Isa Miranda, Darren McGavin, Mari Aldon

Synopsis: Katharine Hepburn stars as Jane Hudson, an Ohio secretary on the verge of spinsterhood. Carefully saving her money, Jane takes an extended trip to Venice, half hoping to find the romance that has always eluded her. Luck of luck, she meets handsome Renato Di Rossi (Rossano Brazzi), who sweeps her Read More

Hobson's Choice

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Charles Laughton, John Mills, Brenda de Banzie, Daphne Anderson, Prunella Scales

Synopsis: A "Hobson's Choice," as any slang expert will tell you, is no choice at all. In this 1953 filmization of Harold Brighouse's 1915 play Hobson's Choice, hero John Mills finds after several reels of evidence to the contrary that he does have a choice over how he'll conduct his life after all. Mills Read More

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ralph Richardson, Ann Todd, Nigel Patrick, John Justin, Dinah Sheridan

Synopsis: Breaking the Sound Barrier juxtaposes the history of jet aviation with an intensely personal fictional story. Ralph Richardson plays a wealthy aircraft manufacturer, stubbornly determined to develop a jet that will travel faster than the speed of sound. Richardson's seemingly cavalier attitude Read More

Madeleine

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Todd, Norman Wooland, Ivan Desny, Leslie Banks, Barbara Everest

Synopsis: David Lean's Madeleine was inspired by a true story that rocked the English legal system to its foundations in the mid-19th century. Told in flashback, the film explains why aristocratic young Scotswoman Madeleine Smith (Ann Todd, then the wife of director Lean) is on trial for murder. The Read More

The Passionate Friends

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Ann Todd, Claude Rains, Trevor Howard, Betty Ann Davies, Isabel Dean

Synopsis: David Lean directed this romantic drama, scripted by Eric Ambler from a novel by H.G. Wells. Mary Justin (Ann Todd) is married to wealthy financier Howard Justin (Claude Rains), and while their marriage allows her to lead a comfortable lifestyle, there's little excitement in their relationship. Read More

Oliver Twist

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, Francis L. Sullivan, John Howard Davies

Synopsis: The second of director David Lean's adaptations of a Charles Dickens novel (Great Expectations (1946) was the first), Oliver Twist expertly boils down an enormous novel to a little less than two hours' screen time. The film begins with baby Oliver left on the doorstep of an orphanage/workhouse by Read More

Brief Encounter

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Cyril Raymond

Synopsis: Based on Noël Coward's play "Still Life," Brief Encounter is a romantic, bittersweet drama about two married people who meet by chance in a London railway station and carry on an intense love affair. Sentimental yet down-to-earth and set in pre-World War II England, the film follows British Read More

Great Expectations

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Finlay Currie, Francis L. Sullivan, Alec Guinness, Jean Simmons

Synopsis: Immediately grabbing the audience's attention with a heart-stopping opening scene in a dark graveyard, acclaimed British director David Lean realizes the cinematic potential of Charles Dickens' classic 1861 novel, and the result is considered by many to be one of the finest literary adaptations Read More

Blithe Spirit

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford, Hugh Wakefield

Synopsis: The Noel Coward/David Lean combination which turned out such dramas as Brief Encounter and This Happy Breed sets its sights on the viewer's funny bone with Blithe Spirit. Rex Harrison plays a novelist, newly married to straight-laced Constance Cummings. Via a seance, Harrison accidentally summons Read More

This Happy Breed

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, John Mills, Kay Walsh, Stanley Holloway

Synopsis: With This Happy Breed, playwright Noel Coward hoped to glorify the British working class in the same manner that he'd celebrated the "higher orders" in Cavalcade. The film begins just after World War I. Middle-class Londoner Robert Newton hopes to improve his family's lot by moving them into a Read More

In Which We Serve

Crew: Director, Editor

Actors: Noël Coward, John Mills, Bernard Miles, Celia Johnson, Joyce Carey

Synopsis: Few morale-boosting wartime films have retained their power and entertainment value as emphatically as Noël Coward's In Which We Serve. To witness Coward's sober, no-nonsense direction (in collaboration with his co-director/editor, David Lean) and to watch his straightforward portrayal of navy Read More

The 49th Parallel

Crew: Editor

Actors: Leslie Howard, Raymond Massey, Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, Glynis Johns

Synopsis: 49th Parallel is a British wartime entreaty for Empire solidarity, concentrating on rousing the patriotic fervor of the citizens of Canada. A group of Nazi naval officers and crewmen are stranded on Canadian soil (we have no sympathy for the castaways, inasmuch as we have just seen them refusing Read More

Major Barbara

Crew: Director

Actors: Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams

Synopsis: George Bernard Shaw's satiric comedy about wealth and poverty is brought to the screen with wonderful performances by Rex Harrison and Wendy Hiller. Hiller plays Major Barbara Undershaft, a major in the Salvation Army who is also a socialist and stridently attacks capitalists -- in particular her Read More

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing

Crew: Editor

Actors: Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman, Hugh Williams, Bernard Miles, Pamela Brown, Hugh Burden

Synopsis: This subtle, unadorned British war drama was the second collaboration between "The Archers," Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Six British bomber crewmen are obliged to bail out over Holland. To escape detection from the Nazis, the crewmen accept the hospitality of several Hollanders, all Read More

French Without Tears

Crew: Editor

Actors: Ellen Drew, Janine Darcey, David Tree, Roland Culver

Synopsis: This Anglo-American coproduction was based on the popular West End stage comedy by Terrence Rattigan. It all begins when Diana (Ellen Drew), the sister of a British boy studying in France, arrives in town to flirt with all of her brothers' schoolmates. Alan (Ray Milland), one of the students Read More

Pygmalion

Crew: Editor

Actors: Wendy Hiller, Leslie Howard, Wilfred Lawson, Marie Lohr, Scott Sunderland

Synopsis: Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller star in Anthony Asquith's and Leslie Howard's classic version of George Bernard Shaw's satiric comedy. Henry Higgins (Howard) is an upper class phonetics professor who encounters low-class guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle (Hiller) and bets his friend Colonel Pickering (Scott Sunderland Read More

The Wife of General Ling

Crew: Editor

Actors: Griffith Jones, Valery Inkijinoff, Alan Napier, Anthony Eustrel

Synopsis: In this espionage drama, a Secret Service agent must discover who has been smuggling British arms into China. The prime suspect is a prosperous Chinese merchant-philanthropist and the agent thinks the merchant is working with the notorious Chinese guerrilla warlord General Ling. ~ Iotis Erlewine Read More

The Last Adventurers

Crew: Editor

Synopsis: In this British adventure, a shipwrecked fellow is saved by the captain of another ship. While aboard, the survivor falls in love with the captains daughter. The unlucky fellow finds himself shipwrecked a second time. Once again, he is saved by the captain who also manages to save his brother and Read More

As You Like It

Crew: Editor

Actors: Henry Ainley, Felix Aylmer, Stuart Robertson, Leon Quartermaine, Austin Trevor, Laurence Olivier, Mackenzie Ward, Elisabeth Bergner, Sophie Stewart

Synopsis: This film version of the famed Shakespearean comedy features Laurence Olivier as Orlando and Elisabeth Bergner as Rosalind. As the story goes, Rosalind, smitten by Orlando and not able to get his attention, disguises herself as a boy to more easily remain in Orlando's vicinity. Eventually Orlando Read More

Escape Me Never

Crew: Editor

Actors: Elisabeth Bergner, Hugh Sinclair, Irene Vanbrugh, Griffith Jones, Penelope Dudley-Ward, Leon Quartermaine

Synopsis: Margaret Kennedy, whose novel The Constant Nymph dealt with a musician's love for a pretty young gamin, penned a variation of the same concept in Escape Me Never. Elizabeth Bergner stars as an unwed mother, who is befriended by impoverished composer Hugh Sinclair. He marries her out of pity, but Read More

Money for Speed

Crew: Editor

Actors: Ida Lupino, Cyril McLaglen, John Loder, Marie Ault

Synopsis: Big Bill Summers (Cyril McLaglen) is the undisputed king of the dirt-track motorcyclists. He also fancies himself quite the ladies' man, and has set his sights on pretty young Jane (Ida Lupino). When rival racer Mitch (John Loder) moves in on Jane, Big Bill seeks revenge on the track, resulting in Read More

Dreaming Lips

Crew: Editor

Actors: Anton Edthofer, Elisabeth Bergner, Raymond Massey, Rudolf Forster, Romney Brent, Joyce Bland, Sydney Fairbrother

Synopsis: Dreaming Lips was lovingly assembled by filmmaker Paul Czinner as an "ideal" vehicle for his popular actress wife Elizabeth Bergner. The star plays Gabrielle, the glamorous, spoiled wife of world-famous orchestra leader Peter (Romney Brent). Left alone by her constantly touring husband, she Read More