The bridge on the River Kwai 1957 - One of the greatest war films ever made

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IMDB Rating: 8,3

Director: David Lean
Main Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa, James Donald

"The Bridge on the River Kwai ranks as one of the greatest films of all time and arguably director David Lean's best film. At the heart of the film is the performance of Alec Guinness as the obsessively principled Colonel Nicholson. In a lesser film, his character might be simplified into a heroic martyr, but The Bridge on the River Kwai revels in its moral ambiguity: no significant character is either purely a hero or purely a villain. Filmed in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the film features brutal prisoner-of-war work camps that are nonetheless considerably nicer than their historical counterparts, a good decision since it frees the audience to focus on the battle of wills, at first between Nicholson and Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), later between Shears (William Holden) and Warden (Jack Hawkins). The film's closing line ('Madness... Madness') is among the best-known and most enigmatic closings in screen history.
Bridge on the River Kwai won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for the legendary British filmmaker David Lean, and Best Actor for Guinness. It also won Best Screenplay for Pierre Boulle, the author of the novel on which the film was based, even though the actual writers were blacklisted writers Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, who were given their Oscars under the table." - www.allmovie.com

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Oliver Twist 1948 - Dickens and Lean: Triumphant combination

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: David Lean
Main Cast: John Howard Davies, Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, Kay Walsh, Anthony Newley

"David Lean's ambitious interpretation of this Charles Dickens classic is a powerful but flawed film. Guy Green's hyaline cinematography dominates the picture from its opening shots of a terrified young woman stumbling around in a stormy heath to its closing scenes of mob violence. His camera is perched above the characters, implying moral superiority to the many flawed characters, while making the ever-vulnerable Oliver look cowed and beaten. The turbulent world of mid-19th century London, with its incessant hustle and bustle of human industry, is recreated so carefully that the vibrant set designs almost overshadow the memorable characters that roam these streets. A smorgasbord of urban decay, social disorder, and class conflict imbues the film with a potent sensuality, as both natural elements and human architecture conspire to consume the disadvantaged. An unrecognisable Alec Guinness, endowed with pounds of prosthetics to mask his youthful vigour, creates a sympathetic Fagin out of a potentially racist caricature. Robert Newton's Mephistophelean Bill Sikes is exemplary, particularly in the scene in which he brutally murders Nancy then sits in tortured and hysterical contemplation of the deed. Dickens' faith in the human spirit is well-depicted in Oliver's ability to survive despite the cruelty of this unjust world. Both Dickens when he wrote the novel and Lean when he filmed it were men near the beginning of their careers whose optimism shone through the darkness of the material. However, the film closes with scenes of mob vigilantism and sentimentality that carry messages betraying the social commentary that precedes them." - www.allmovie.com

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Great expectations 1946 - Excellent adaptation of the classic Dickens novel

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IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: David Niven
Main Cast: John Mills,Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Alec Guinness, Bernard Miles, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt

"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 ever made as well as one of the greatest British films of all time. Crystallized into a tight 118-minute running time by Lean, Ronald Neame, and a corps of uncredited contributors, this is the story of young Pip, a lad of humble means whose training as a gentleman is bankrolled by a mysterious benefactor. Along the way, Pip falls in love with the fickle Estella, befriends the cheerfully insouciant Herbert Pocket, has memorable encounters with the escaped convict Magwitch and the lunatic dowager Miss Havisham, and almost (but not quite) forgets his modest origins as the foster son of kindhearted blacksmith Joe Gargery. The role of Pip is evenly divided between Anthony Wager as a child and John Mills as an adult; Alec Guinness makes his starring film debut as the jaunty Pocket; Jean Simmons and Valerie Hobson are costarred as the younger and older Estella; and Martita Hunt is unforgettable as the mad Miss Havisham.
Remade several times, Great Expectations resurfaced in 1989 as a TV miniseries, with Jean Simmons, originally the young Estella, tearing a passion to tatters as Miss Havisham; and in 1998 it was remade again, in a contemporary version, with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert DeNiro, and Anne Bancroft in the Miss Havisham role." - www.allmovie.com

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Brief encounter 1945 - The classic poignant love story

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: David Lean
Main Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Cyril Raymond

"Based on Noel 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. A model of narrative restraint and emotional power, the movie won over post-war audiences with its fidelity to the ordinariness of its story and ambiance. Through subtle details of character, manner, expression (and a Rachmaninoff score), Lean reveals the profound impact of unexpected passion on the lives of his middle-class, middle-aged couple, despite the final restoration of routine. Praised for its feeling and its realism, including the lack of Hollywood-ized glamour of its stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, Brief Encounter became a rare foreign import hit. Johnson won the New York Film Critics' Circle award for Best Actress, while the film garnered Oscar nominations for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. It was Lean's first great film, and its intimate romanticism reveals the skill at portraying human relationships that would distinguish his later, spectacular epics, such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984)." - www.allmovie.com

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In which we serve 1942 - A British wartime classic

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IMDB rating: 7,4

Directors: Noel Coward, David Lean
Main Cast: Noel Coward, Michael Wilding, James Donald, John Mills

"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 captain Kinross, one would never suspect that he'd built his theatrical reputation upon sophisticated drawing-room comedies and brittle, witty song lyrics. The real star of In Which We Serve is the British destroyer Torrin. Torpedoed in battle, the Torrin miraculously survives, and is brought back to English shores to be repaired. The paint is barely dry and the nuts and bolts barely in place before the Torrin is pressed into duty during the Dunkirk evacuation. The noble vessel is finally sunk after being dive-bombed in Crete, but many of the crew members survive. As they cling to the wreckage awaiting rescue, Coward and his men flash back to their homes and loved ones, and, in so doing, recall anew just why they're fighting and for whom they're fighting. Next to Coward, the single most important of the film's characters is Shorty Blake, played by John Mills. (Trivia note: Mills' infant daughter Juliet Mills appears as Shorty's baby.) Even so, the emphasis in the film is on teamwork; here as elsewhere, there can be no stars in wartime.
The movie's most important attribute was also its least appreciated: its structure, which owed a great deal to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) in breaking up the action into flashback vignettes and non-linear storytelling. Coward and Lean had studied the Welles film closely in pre-production, and they applied its lessons about film narrative to a topical, contemporary action setting. In Which We Serve is arguably the popular film that best took the breakthroughs of Citizen Kane and ran with them into new dramatic territory." - www.allmovie.com

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