David Lean British or Hollywood

[charliechaplinfan]

I finished watching Dr Zhivago, this is what I typed on the general thread. Watching Lean's movies as a body of work is an interesting experience.

I've finished watching Dr Zhivago and must admit it has grown on me. I think it sags in the middle when they are transported by train to Yuriatin. I don't remember having any feeling about Omar Sharif's portrayal of Zhivago in the past, I found him cold, perhaps it's the fact I'm a little more mature that this time I warmed to his poet. I still have trouble with lara, I don't know whether it's Julie Christie or the way the romance between them is written, it just doesn't seem to spark enough to be a grand passion. I get the impression that Zhivago loves Tonya just as much, it's just that she's the fimiliar and Lara is the one he'd longed for. I can see where the film is trying to go, it's trying to spark the feeling of the unforgettable Lara who has been imbedded on his memory from first meeting, she is a good woman, very young at the beginning, a woman who matures and is a good woman. Still I found it very sad that he found neither of his women again, at least we're not told of a reconciliation with Tonya. Geraldine Chaplin is so lovely as Tonya, so noble and good, understanding about Lara and seeing past womanly envy to understand the love that Yuri feels for Lara, that's a difficult role to play and she does it really well. Tom Courtenay is chilling, especially once he's a member of the Red Army. My favorite Rod Steiger in a role that Marlon Brando didn't even bother to refuse, somehow Marlon would have been wrong although interesting casting, a bit too handsome and might have made the character charming in his caddish behaviour. Then the part got offered to James Mason who I'm sure would have been excellent. Rod Steiger did an excellent job, I've never thought him as handsome but in the opening scenes he is, especially in his waistcoat as he tries to save his mistresses life. How I wish there had been a parallel story about Victor. How did he survive? How was he able to change sides so easily? He must have had a fortune.

The real star of the picture is the photography, the landscape and the history, a time not too long ago which was utterly barbaric, I agree with Lara when she says it is a terrible time to be born.

Has anyone read the book? I wonder if it fills in some of the gaps.

[JackFavell]

Today on TCM, they are showing a lineup of some of my favorite David Lean movies - including

This Happy Breed
Brief Encounter
Great Expectations
Oliver Twist
Hobson's Choice
Dr. Zhivago

I watched Brief Encounter again, and was simply blow away by the bravura of the movie - and it's sheer perfection.

The way Lean boldly leaps into the movie gets me every time, starting off with a moment of silence right before the shrieking of a train whistle as the most gorgeous looking train in film history comes pulsing across the screen under the credits. White smoke billows out in great gorgeous clouds of romantic steam across the top third of the frame as we hear the clack of the wheels on the track. Then those pounding, pulsing chords of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto no. 2 erupt, imitating the rhythm of the train, surprising in their intensity, startling my emotions. Lean's shocked me with beauty and violent sound, but ends plainly in a quiet, middle class home in England, after dinner. He takes us, of our own volition, and our emotions will be caught up and whirled around until they are almost backwards at the end of the film, like the music. An unearthly calm will overtake us. I will come out into the light, having lived an entire other life in the space of not even one hour and a half.

I was stunned at how fast I became completely and utterly involved in the story. It must have been in the first three minutes of the film that I became enraptured with it yet again.

Part of the magic of this film is Noel Coward's elegantly beautiful, tortured, restrained-to-the-point-of-breaking writing, and part is Lean's perfectly cinematic use of POV. I am quite curious to know whose idea it was to start the film at the end, doubling up that scene where the horribly chatty Everley Gregg shows up, interrupting the last tryst of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. We see the scene as an outsider at the beginning, as a friend of a friend might. I have not read Tonight at 8:30, was it Coward's idea to play the scene over with new perspective at the end, or Lean's? Or Havelock-Allen's? or Ronald Neame's? It is a master stroke, entering the dingy station with Dolly Messiter. It pulls us smack into the action of the movie by way of the town gossip who notices nothing, but it takes very little time for us to notice surreptitious glances and the discomfort of the two at the table in the very public railway station room. Lean's camera brings us in carefully on the two, stealing glances at them, we become quite aware of the clandestine nature of the situation.

Lean then does something stunning, he walks us right into the thoughts of this mousy housewife with the big sad eyes. Because of his judicious camera work, this feels completely right. He moves in closer quite slowly until we are ready for it, and as naturally as if it were our own thoughts coming out in voice-over, she begins, "I wish I could trust you..." she whispers. I almost didn't hear it. "I wish you were a wise, kind friend..." How many times have I been bored, sitting on a train or in a car, having a conversation in my own head? The voice-over begins, and I have become the wise, kind friend that Laura Jesson needs. I swear, my eyes have not left the screen once since the start of the film... Lean has captured me, holding me rapt and attentive as i follow that inward spiral, until we are abruptly bumped out of it at Ketchworth. The way Lean brings us in and out of Laura's thoughts is brilliant, because we are not only living in "real" time, train time - the time it takes to get from one station to another; but we are also living in Laura's dream time. He pulls the movie in and out of that reverie with sound.... I can't remember the last time I read about the sound of Lean's films, but he totally understands how we hear, or don't hear the noises around us. Anyway, at this point, we have been let in on a supreme intimacy....but we are yanked back to reality when we reach Laura's home. We are introduced to her big lovable ham of a husband, and her voice-over switches it's object - no longer us, but Fred. Lean allows us the close friend's privilege, to overhear a sort of confession, a one sided conversation with the unimaginative Fred, comforting Fred, the perfect man to bounce things off of... and this is where the movie rises to genius level, because this is also where the movie will end.

[charliechaplinfan]

Oh, Wendy you put it so perfectly. I could live the movie again just reading your words. I have watched this movie so many times and it never loses it's power and I always noitce something different or get a different perspective. Last time I watched it I doubted Alec's veracity, Laura was completely drawn into her romance and I believe he thought he was but I'm not sure he would have lasted the difference. My favorite Lean film and that's saying something.

[feaito]

Wendy, your post is so heartfelt and well-written that it has made me want to watch BE again -it's one of my favorite films and IMO and unsurpassed masterpiece of the British (& World) Cinema.

[JackFavell]

Gosh, how much that movie this morning moved me - I was intent on noticing every detail this time, as I am always swept up and away by the sheer emotion - but it happened again and I was only able to notice a few things about it, mostly about the sounds of the movie.

Alison,

I swear, we are related somehow, because I was doubting Alec too last time, but this time, I watched him very carefully and believed, really believed in him... he is so restrained, almost too perfect a lover, but watch him in those moments when Laura is in doubt - he is in agony too, his face crumples, saddens..I want him to be not so strong and manly just once...to look back that last time out the door. But he can't...

Ferchu,

Can you imagine watching this when it first came out? I can't imagine seeing it in a theatre, being too embarrassed to leave there with the choking hot tears streaming down my face...

I also think BE is one of the greatest movies of all time, so perfectly conceived and put together, but in no sense bound by it's structure. It breaks free of any constraints, living a life of it's own. Maybe it's because the structure is that of a romance - from nothing at all, to the the heights of excitement, love and hope, and finally to the depths of loss and despondency, back to nothing at all. I don't know how he did it, but Lean somehow is able to take you inside Laura's emotions, I laugh when she laughs at Alec falling into the water, and I feel sick when she feels that she will die from the separation.

Lean is so audacious, there are things in this movie I can't remember seeing before. Daydreams within flashbacks within a plain simple story. Even the movie theatre trailers when Laura and Alec are at the pictures are pricelessly bad. The edit between "Flames of Passion" and the baby stroller ad is hilarious. His camera somehow illustrates pure emotion so well, and I have no idea at all how he does it, and so smoothly, seamlessly and rightly. There is the right mixture of humor and sadness... everything in the picture is supposed top be there, there is nothing I would leave out or put in. Everything fits and flows. Of course there are the bold camera moves - but they are not out of place. When Laura is listening to Alec's train leave for the last time, the camera slowly tilts up over end, looking at her numb face, her eyes growing bigger and bigger as she resolves to throw herself out onto the tracks, it is a perfect description of the way she feels. But there are a hundred or more other small ways that Lean captures the giddy feeling of love and the absolute depth of despair, all within the lives of two absolutely normal people, like you and me, maybe for those of us who think we are beyond all that.

[feaito]

Very Well put Wendy, this film has a lot of truth in it and that's what touches me every time I see it. Everything is so real and full of honesty, devoid of any kind of artificiality or affectation, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard giving the performances of their careers...When I think of Brief Encounter I think of Life and Art. This is my favorite David Lean film. Nothing can top his 1940s masterpieces...

[charliechaplinfan]

I'm very much in agreement with you both. Brief Encounter is perfect and now I need to watch it again to watch Alec at every moment to see if my view changes, I find that when Celia JOhnson is on the screen it's difficult to look away from her.

[JackFavell]

I completely agree, she captivates you. Every reaction and thought shows so beautifully on her face, you can't look away, you'll miss something!

[JackFavell]

I agree, kingrat -

I saw Lean in so many shots from In Which We Serve ( a movie I seem to be unable to watch all the way through, in spite of being intensely interested in it for years). I was only able to catch the beginning 40 minutes. After seeing The Sound Barrier recently, even the shots of the boats shooting through the water, the backspray splashing up, looked like Lean, the camera angles were extremely beautiful. The conceit of having the men drifting in and out of memory was very effective.

I'm sorry I distracted you from your pile of movies - I have one too and need very badly to catch up on CAUGHT. I still haven't watched my films from Netflix yet!

[charliechaplinfan]

It's not just me with films piling up, even though I have time on my hands it seems to vanish like a willow the wisp

I watched In Which We Serve for the first time recently. I do have trouble accepting Noel Coward as the captain of a ship but looking past that, he does actually make it believable. David Lean did direct the movie, I think it was taken on as a joint project but Lean had such an apptitude for directing that Coward didn't have to step behind the camera. Kevin Brownlow wrote a brilliant biography of David Lean that brings the British film industry to life, not just Lean's magnificient films. Lean was a cutter and the very best before he turned to directing, he could have directed before In Which We Serve but he wanted to be at the top of his game and sure of his debut as a director.

[charliechaplinfan]

You're so right Kingrat.

Celia Johnson made very few films and the war period was very hard for her. She had a small son and also had her widowed sister in law living with her along with her 5 children. She lived on a farm so had to keep that going and did voluntary war work at the police station. Travelling wasn't easy and she lived in the country. Yet there must have been something about the combination of Lean and Coward that made her read their scripts and rearrange her life so she could take part. She wrote to her husband in the Far east about Brief Encounter that it came at a most inconvenient time but it was such a good part that she couldn't bear to turn it down. I'm glad she didn't. England had many capable actresses, Wendy Hiller springs immediately to mind, along with Peggy Ashcroft but I'm very grateful that Celia did appear as Laura. A story from Lean is how Celia Johnson could give a highly emotional performance and then switch straight off and go home. She was allowed to knock off and go home on a Saturday afternoon, she finished a very important scene perfectly and then looked at her watch and off she went. David Lean couldn't understand that, he was so wrapped up in his work, he couldn't understand how someone could be so good yet be able to switch off and into her other life.

[charliechaplinfan]

Her daughter Kate Fleming wrote a wonderful book about her mother. I'd highly recommend it, Celia Johnson by Kate Fleming.