A Passage to India)

Starring:David Lean
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Lawrence of Arabia
In David Lean's masterful "desert classic," Peter O'Toole gives a star-making performance as T.E. Lawrence, the eccentric British officer who united the desert tribes of Arabia against the Turks during World War I. Lean orchestrates sweeping battle sequences and breathtaking action, but the film is really about the adventures and trials that transform Lawrence into a legendary man of the desert. Lean traces this transformation on a vast canvas of awesome physicality; no other movie has captured the expanse of the desert with such scope and grandeur. Equally important is the psychology of Lawrence, who remains an enigma even as we grasp his identification with the desert. Perhaps the greatest triumph of this landmark film is that Lean has conveyed the romance, danger, and allure of the desert with such physical and emotional power. It's a film about a man who leads one life but is irresistibly drawn to another, where his greatness and mystery are allowed to flourish in equal measure. --Jeff Shannon

The Bridge on the River Kwai
Director David Lean's masterful 1957 realization of Pierre Boulle's novel remains a benchmark for war films, and a deeply absorbing movie by any standard--like most of Lean's canon, The Bridge on the River Kwai achieves a richness in theme, narrative, and characterization that transcends genre. The story centers on a Japanese prison camp isolated deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia, where the remorseless Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) has been charged with building a vitally important railway bridge. His clash of wills with a British prisoner, the charismatic Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), escalates into a duel of honor, Nicholson defying his captor's demands to win concessions for his troops. How the two officers reach a compromise, and Nicholson becomes obsessed with building that bridge, provides the story's thematic spine; the parallel movement of a team of commandos dispatched to stop the project, led by a British major (Jack Hawkins) and guided by an American escapee (William Holden), supplies the story's suspense and forward momentum. Shot on location in Sri Lanka, Kwai moves with a careful, even deliberate pace that survivors of latter-day, high-concept blockbusters might find lulling--Lean doesn't pander to attention deficit disorders with an explosion every 15 minutes. Instead, he guides us toward the intersection of the two plots, accruing remarkable character details through extraordinary performances. Hayakawa's cruel camp commander is gradually revealed as a victim of his own sense of honor, Holden's callow opportunist proves heroic without softening his nihilistic edge, and Guinness (who won a Best Actor Oscar, one of the production's seven wins) disappears as only he can into Nicholson's brittle, duty-driven, delusional psychosis. His final glimpse of self-knowledge remains an astonishing moment--story, character, and image coalescing with explosive impact. --Sam Sutherland

Amazon.com essential video

David Lean's handsome adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic novel captures the warm humor and richness of character that so many filmmakers miss in their reverent recreations of Victorian England. From the nightmarish opening sequence on the windswept graveyard where young orphan Pip (Anthony Wager) meets the desperate escaped criminal Magwitch (Finlay Currie) to the shadowy, musty mansion of the widow Miss Haversham (Martita Hunt) where he first meets the impertinent young beauty Estella (Jean Simmons), Lean captures a childlike exaggeration of reality with his elegant expressionism. When Pip's sudden change in fortune sends him to London as a burgeoning gentleman in high society, Lean sketches a beautiful, bustling city. John Mills's performance as the adult Pip charts his change from the wide-eyed wonder and generous spirit of the child he was to the class snob transformed by money and social standing, an ugly flaw that Pip confronts when his mysterious benefactor is finally revealed. The outstanding cast also features Valerie Hobson as the grown-up Estella, now a beguiling enchantress, a bright young Alec Guinness in his film debut as Pip's jovial London roommate Herbert Pocket, and the imposing Francis L. Sullivan as the decidedly humorless lawyer Jaggers. Exquisitely photographed by Guy Green (who won an Oscar for his work). Lean and his collaborators effectively maintain the heart of Dickens's epic drama while cutting it to its essentials in this vivid, compelling film. --Sean Axmaker

Description

One of the great translations of literature into film, David Lean's Great Expectations brings Charles Dickens' masterpiece to robust onscreen life. Pip, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, and Estella populate Lean's magnificent miniature, beautifully photographed by Guy Green and designed by John Bryan.

Customer Reviews:

David Lean's Great Expectations.......2007-06-22

Perhaps the finest Dickens adaptation ever, this rich, fascinating film about chance encounters and changing fortunes begins with a nerve-rattling sequence in a graveyard that's one of the finest moments in British film. Both Mills and Guinness are a trifle old for their roles, but their virtuosity fully compensates. Guinness, in his first significant screen appearance, is particularly striking as pocket, giving us a tantalizing taste of things to come. A bona-fide classic.

Great Expectations - Criterion Collection.......2007-01-31

I usually love Criterion editions and am willing to pay the increased price to receive all the usual Criterion extras - commentary, interviews, etc.

Unfortunately, aside from the normal remastered print of the film (very well done indeed), the trailer and the inside notes, this edition had none of the features I have come to expect (and pay dear for). Therefore, I would not recommend this item (at its current high price) to anyone who already owns a good print of the movie.

JBF

An English Teacher's Review.......2006-12-19

I should mention first that this is the only film version of "Great Expectations" that I have ever seen. There may be better ones, but I'm only qualified to talk about this one.

My 10th graders were spellbound by this film. They saw it on a big screen from an Epson 720p projector with big stereo sound, which probably helped. However, their reaction to it really surprised me. From the first frame they were rapt, and it turned into one of their favorite experiences of the year.

David Lean's brilliant cinematography is partly responsible for this - the lighting and composition are absolutely stupendous. Many people talk about the "possibilities" of black and white, but David Lean delivers them. The film is visually stunning.

The film also does a decent, if not perfect, job of following the book; obviously some scenes needed to be shortened or left out entirely or this would have been a five hour film. It is not so accurate that you can read a chapter and then watch it, but it is accurate enough that it is certainly worth showing as a reward for finishing the book.

I withhold the fifth star only because the actresses who play young Estella and "grown woman" Estella are so jarringly different as to be almost impossible to accept as the same character. For instance, young Estella seems to have a nose from Sweden, while grown Estella's nose seems to hail from somewhere near Rome. The actresses just aren't similar enough to sustain even the most willing suspension of disbelief.

The actress who plays Miss Havisham, however, is utterly perfect, and her whole broken-hearted domain is reproduced exactly as I imagined it from the book, right down to the mouse-gnawed, spider-infested wedding cake. Her 25 year-long tantrum is shown as half-hilarious, half-horrifying, which is exactly as Dickens intended it in my opinion, and the actress captures the perfect blend of nuances in portraying this unique character as perfectly as she could be portrayed.

The rest of the characters are quite well done also, including the attorney, Pip's sister, Joe and the "pale young gentleman." Even the clerk with "The Aged" father is well played, although the tour of his castle-house from the book is absent. Pip himself is portrayed very appropriately by both the young and older actors, and never disappoints.

Along with the characters, the film provides an incredible amount of tantalizing 19th century detail, enough to keep even the sleepiest, most sullen student awake at 8:02 am on a cold winter morning. All in all, well worth the $35 asking price, especially because, like all Criterion titles in my experience, the DVD transfer looks and sounds absolutely beautiful.

Changed from the book but still worth seeing!.......2006-06-23

The characters of Charles Dickens's timeless tale come to life in spellbinding black and white that perfectly captures the book's tone. Both Estella and Miss Havisham's characters are vastly sweetened from the book. Estella has genuine affection for Pip instead of just seeing him as another person to manipulate. Miss Havisham is actually concerned when Estella and Pip fight instead of being happy that her master plan of having Estella break Pip's heart is succeeding. These changes allow for the overly saccharin ending that is greatly different in tone and plot from either of the two grim endings Dickens actually wrote for the book.

A Great Movie From A Great Novel, And Perfectly Cast.......2005-12-25

If a movie ever captured better the look in your head of a book you've read than David Lean's Great Expectations, I don't know what it would be. From the moment young Pip is seen running along the marsh road to the deserted cemetery and his encounter with the escaped convict, Magwitch (scaring Pip as well as us half to death) to Pip the young man ripping down the dust-laden, moldering drapes in Miss Havisham's decaying mansion and letting the daylight in, we see what we imagined, and it's just about perfect.

Great Expectations is one of Charles Dickens' greatest novels, and the movie, in my opinion, is David Lean's greatest accomplishment as a director. You'd have to be a cynic not to be captured by this story of a young, poor boy, an orphan raised in a blacksmith's home by his sister and her husband, who unexpectedly becomes a young gentleman of great expectations.

Lean chose actors who bring the characters vividly to life. Pip (John Mills) is a young man who has become self-satisfied with the mysterious funds he receives that have enabled him to become a gentleman. In time, however, he realizes "that in becoming a gentleman, I had only succeeded in becoming a snob." But Pip's innate honesty and humanity come through as he accepts the debt he owes to his benefactor and faces the love he has for Estella. Jean Simmons as young Estella and Valerie Hobson as Estella the woman are beautiful and cruel, as Estella was raised to be by Miss Havisham. Francis L. Sullivan is perfect as the large, shrewd lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, who knows all the secrets. Miss Havisham is played by Martita Hunt. Miss Havisham was abandoned on her wedding day years before. She has retreated into bitterness, living within her mansion as if time at stopped, the draperies closed, still wearing her wedding dress, cobwebs festooning the rooms and the banquet table still fully set, bearing what remains of the bride's cake. She will see to it that men, through Estella, will suffer as she suffered. Finlay Currie is Magwitch, the tough, hulking convict who was unexpectedly touched by young Pip bringing him food. Alec Guinness is Herbert Pocket, good natured, energetic and a true friend.

At the end of the story, Pip and Estella realize they will have great expectations together. There is sadness, happiness, redemption, regret and love. Most off all, there are these marvelous characters in a great story.

The Criterion DVD looks fine. There are no significant extras. An insert contains an informative essay about the film and Lean by Adrian Turner, a British film critic.

Average customer rating:

The Sigh of Midnight Trains in Empty Stations
Wonderful
An obscure treasure
An adult movie without the embarrassment
Hilarious!

Brief Encounter - Criterion Collection
Starring: Celia Johnson , Trevor Howard , Stanley Holloway , Joyce Carey , and Cyril Raymond
Director: David Lean
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: 0780023420
Release Date: 2000-06-27

Amazon.com essential video

To many, Brief Encounter may seem like a relic of more proper times--or, specifically, more properly British times--when the pressures of marital decorum and fidelity were perhaps more keenly felt. In truth, David Lean's fourth film remains a timeless study of true love (or, rather, the promise of it), and the aching desire for intimate connection that is often subdued by the obligations of marriage. And so it is that ordinary Londoners Alec (Trevor Howard), a married doctor, and contented housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) meet by chance one day in a train station, when he volunteers to remove a fleck of ash from her eye (a romantic gesture that, perhaps, inspired Robert Towne's "flaw in the iris" scene in Chinatown).

It so happens that their schedules coincide at the train station every Thursday, and their casual attraction grows, through quiet conversation and longing expressions, into the desperate recognition of mutual love. From this point forward, Lean turns this utterly precise, 85-minute film into a bracing study of romantic suspense, leading inevitably, and with the paranoid, furtive glances of a spy thriller, to the moment when this brief encounter must be consummated or abandoned altogether. Decades later, the outcome of this affair--both agonizing and rapturous--is subtle and yet powerful enough to draw tears from the numbest of souls, and spark debate regarding the tragedy or virtue of the choices made. A truly universal film, with meticulously controlled emotions revealed through the flawless performances of Howard and Johnson, and an enduring masterpiece that continued Lean on his course to cinematic greatness. --Jeff Shannon

Description

From Noël Coward's play Still Life, legendary filmmaker David Lean deftly explores the thrill, pain, and tenderness of an illicit romance in the dour, gray Britain of 1945. From a chance meeting on a train platform, a middle-aged married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) enter into a quietly passionate, ultimately doomed love affair, set to a swirling Rachmaninoff score. Criterion is proud to present Lean's award-winning masterpiece a beautifully restored digital transfer.

Customer Reviews:

The Sigh of Midnight Trains in Empty Stations.......2007-05-06

This is my favorite British film of all time. Brilliant writing, fine acting, ecconomicaly concise production and inspired direction all combine to make a landmark movie and a defining moment in social history.

Celia Johnson is terrific! She is talented and beautiful. More than girlishly pretty, she has the deep resonant beauty of a full grown woman. Her eyes are huge and so expressive, as she copes with the guilt and sordidness of an extra-marital love. She narrates to move the story along in places. Her performance draws you in and holds you. A lesser actress could not have pulled it off so well.

Trevor Howard plays her illicit love. Their screen chemistry is subtly electric. Stanley Holloway and Joyce Carey provide a light sub-plot, which compliments the main story.

The film was released in the Spring of 1945, just as World War 2 was ending in Europe. Whether on purpose or not, the film announced a return to peacetime morality. The characters fall in love, but their love remains unrequited. Love is allowed, but the heart is not allowed to rule the head. The film is set in an unspecified time of peace with no blackout, no bombsites, and with cakes and chocolate freely available. There is a 'forward to the past' kind of message.

Speak to an old Brit who was there, and you will find out that all sorts went on during the war when couples were separated, and there was horrific stress. A lot more than dancing went on up on Plymouth Hoe, when people did not know if their homes would be standing from one day to the next, and they barely had enough food to keep a cat alive.

In truth, food was rationed into the '50s in Britain, and I wonder if we have ever got over the effects of that war. The film portrays a British middle-class idyl that would never return. Even the British laugh at those accents now. Nobody talks like that anymore.

If you've never seen it, you are in for a rare treat. If you haven't seen it for a while, then it is well worth revisiting. My review title is a line from a Noel Coward song. I thought it fitted since he wrote the screenplay, and the main setting is a railway station.

Wonderful.......2007-04-27

What can you say about this movie? The story is an endless tail of love found and love lost. The movie is wonderful acting from the leads to all the secondary actors. No matter how many times I've seen this movie the kicker is ALWAYS the final sceen when you find the dolt of a husband is no dolt after all and the kleenex comes out every time. You just can't lose with this movie. It's the best.

An obscure treasure.......2007-04-19

A beautiful movie in all respects. Filmed in Great Britain in the 1940s, and therefore black and white. A thoughtful, reflective presentation, from the woman's perspective, of a relationship that developed over a period of a few weeks. Deeply tender.

An adult movie without the embarrassment.......2007-01-11

The subject is temptation. The affair begins innocently enough, but escalates to something that threatens to destroy two families. The suburban housewife played perfectly by Celia Johnson does the right thing when she realizes what she was about to lose. There is passion without profanity or nudity, and in the end, everybody does the right thing. I think we could all learn from this movie.

Hilarious!.......2006-11-17

Every time this movie comes on my husband (who is English) and I watch it and laugh our heads off.If you have ever been in an English train station,drinking weak,watery cups of tea out of dirty,cracked cups.Smelling mildew and stale cigarettes while you freeze to death you would see the humor in anyone being romantically moved while sitting there.And not to be crule,but these are not exactly a couple of sex-pots.The thought of two stodgy old English people being driven wild by their passion for each other is,well------------------ hilarious! I give it 5 stars for being so darn funny.Oh--- and the music---- PLEASE!!!!!!!!!! But it is worth watching for a good laugh!

Oliver Twist (1948) - Criterion Collection

Average customer rating:

Oliver Twist
A Gift Purchase
THE GENIUS OF DAVID LEAN
The best version of Dickens' immortal story on film.
Bleak and black, a heart of light in a world of night !

Oliver Twist (1948) - Criterion Collection
Starring: Robert Newton , Alec Guinness , Kay Walsh , Francis L. Sullivan , and John Howard Davies
Director: David Lean
Manufacturer: Criterion
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Oliver Twist (2005)

ASIN: B00000F17A
Release Date: 1999-01-12

Amazon.com

David Lean's 1948 version of Charles Dickens' classic novel begins with a bang: the young hero's pregnant mother fighting her way through a storm, a perfect metaphor for Oliver's difficult road ahead. Set in a world of slums in the shadow of Victorian England, the story traces the boy's life in a workhouse and then with a gang of little pickpockets. A stark but good-looking film shot around some impressive sets, Lean's immortal adaptation is perhaps best known for Alec Guinness's remarkable (and slightly controversial) performance as Fagin, the old mentor to the gang of boy thieves. --Tom Keogh

Description

Expressionistic noir photography suffuses David Lean's Oliver Twist with a nightmarish quality, fitting its bleak, industrial setting. In Dickens' classic tale, an orphan wends his way from cruel apprenticeship to den of thieves in search of a true home. Here Alec Guinness is the quintessential Fagin, his controversial performance fully restored in Criterion's new digital transfer.

Customer Reviews:

Oliver Twist.......2007-06-25

This masterful adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel was the second for Lean, who abridged the author's long-winded story about a young orphan's changing fortunes in Victorian England into a beautifully paced two-hour film. Among a splendid cast, Guinness and Robert Newton are truly exceptional, respectively playing the captivating Fagin and his evil accomplice, Bill Sikes, with gusto. Also fun to watch is young Anthony Newley as the Artful Dodger. Essentially a tale of triumph in a world of degrading poverty and repellent class bias, "Oliver Twist" is a first-rate drama brimming with hope, pathos, and fury, from opening shot to last.

A Gift Purchase.......2007-06-01

I purchased this for my son-in-law's birthday. He is very happy with it and consideres it the best version of "Oliver Twist" that he has ever seen!

THE GENIUS OF DAVID LEAN.......2007-04-25

David Lean is best known for his super epics, like Lawrence Of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Bridge On The River Kwai. But earlier in his career, he did some outstanding films based on the plays of Noel Coward (like Brief Encounter) and on the works of Dickens (like Great Expectations). His film Oliver Twist, from 1948, is an early masterpiece.

You can see the genius of Lean in every frame; but there is one scene in particular that stands out. It is the one in which Bill Sikes is beating Nancy to death for giving the names of him and the rest of their gang to Mr. Brownlow. Lean doesn't show the actual beating, but he shows the reaction to it by someone else in the room: Bill Sike's dog. All you hear are the girl's screams and all you see is the dog, terrified, frantically trying to get out of the room by clawing his way through the door. It is one of the most terrifying scenes I've ever watched, and yet you don't see one bit of violence. It is incredible.

Eventually, Sikes lets the dog out, and he leaves in a panic. Later, Sikes finds the dog in the streets, and he cowers before his master. I've never seen a dog tremble like he does in this scene. It, too, is incredible, and the dog should have gotten an Oscar.

Genius finds new and more effective ways to accomplish things that would normally be considered distasteful or inappropriate.

The other scene that stands out to me is near the end, when the crowd is coming to get Sikes. It is the climax of the film, and it is powerful. I've never seen a crowd scene more spectacular, or a climax more suspenseful. There's also never been a more terrifying villain than Bill Sikes (played menacingly by Robert Newton), especially in the eyes of a boy. He contrasts nicely with Oliver Twist (played by John Howard Davies) and his innocence.

Oliver Twist was banned in this country (it's British) when it came out in 1948 because the Film Board felt Alec Guinness' portrayal of Fagan was anti-Semitic. It is over-the-top, especially the nose. But Guinness is genius. Kay Walsh as Nancy, Francis L. Sullivan as Mr. Brumble, Henry Stephenson as Mr. Brownlow and Anthony Newly as the Artful Dodger are also outstanding.

Waitsel Smith

The best version of Dickens' immortal story on film. .......2006-07-12

This film of Dickens' "Oliver Twist" from 1948 is still the best that has ever been done. The choices made to tell the story in two hours are quite amazing in the detail and sub plots and choice dialogue from the book that they still keep in. David Lean can do all this because of his masterful work with the camera. The scenes are so evocative of London Dickens paints in the novel. There is faceless barren despair in the workhouse, smoke and decay in London slum near St. Paul's Cathedral, and the light and beauty of Clerkenwell (that was back then) where the wealthy Mr. Brownlow lives.

The black and white filming actually adds to the light and shadow of the story and helps evoke the right moods as much as any musical score. I think it is actually a plus for this film even though it is a bit of a chore getting young people to cue in on the contributions of black and white over color pictures. Still, my youngest son could clearly see why this was a great telling of the story.

Here we have a thirty-three year old Alec Guinness made up in a way that probably would not work nowadays and emphasizes Fagin's Jewishness, but doesn't make Fagin out to be anything more than he is as a person. Guinness does NOT make Fagin out to be bad because he is a Jew, but rather that he is a miserly criminal who happens to be Jewish. It is a fine portrayal of Fagin and masterfully acted.

Robert Newton is very threatening as the monster Bill Sikes. He pulls the job off quite well and we get a very complex picture of his attitudes towards Fagin, Nancy, and the world. As an aside, Newton was a very popular actor who harmed his career and shortened his life with drink, as did Oliver Reed who portrayed Sikes so well in "Oliver!". Just a strange coincidence.

Kay Walsh does a fine job with Nancy, who is portrayed more as she is in the book rather than the heroine she is made to be in the musical and in some sloppy versions on film or for TV. She was married to Lean at the time although they divorced in 1949. John Howard Davies really does look the part of the small and slight Oliver Twist and acts out the role quite well. He had a fine career but mostly as a director and producer including Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969.

We also get to see the young Anthony Newly (all of sixteen) as the Artful Dodger and many other wonderful character actors as well as a huge cast of extras. Remember, this was only a couple of years after World War II and there were a lot of people grateful for any kind of work for any length of time.

This is an immortal story that millions still love to read, hear, and see. This is a telling of the story that is awfully good. While I still recommend the book most of all, if you are going to watch a film version, this is the one I would start with and recommend most highly.

Bleak and black, a heart of light in a world of night !.......2006-06-10

This 1948 version of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist is one to remember. First you have Dickens and his vision of the world, a black and white vision, good and evil at the same time in the same society but not in the same people, though at least one woman has been forced to be bad but she was not and she will betray her tormentors who will kill her. The murderer will hang for it. Then there is the poor and how Dickens' society treats them, deals with them in the famous parish workhouses, and among these poor Dickens concentrates on the young, the children. No education, work as soon as they are nine, if not even earlier with menial tasks in the workhouse, lean by starving, not to death but to survival. In contrast the rich, or the wealthy who stuff themselves into apoplexy, selfishness and inhumanity. Yet this society is also inhabited and haunted by the good who are not necessarily among the wealthy or the poor. The good are spread out in the whole society and it is when some good ones meet across the divide of wealth that miracles can happen. Oliver Twist is such a miracle. We will never know why his mother fled her family but we know Oliver's future is in the hands of fate, some call it God, and his genes. Fate will be the accidental if not incidental meeting of Oliver with his grandfather on a street in London when the boys who have picked him from the gutter are trying to rob this grandfather in front of a bookstore. Dickens of course adds another element that is difficult to swallow with grace : the boss of the thieves, Fagin, is an obvious Jew and the movie does not need to say so, it shows it with his crooked nose and his avariciousness. In 1948 that was no courage to keep that detail, no fidelity to Dickens either because it could have been made discreet and it is not, it is as visible as the nose in the middle of the face. That leads me to the film. Black and white, it is a marvellous masterpiece. This black and white universe of the film is in perfect agreement with Dickens' social and human vision. It emphasizes the bleakness of this universe and it can concentrate on the main color of London at the time of coal, soot, smog and some other evils of coal-burning : it was black, so black that even the red color of the bricks was no longer visible. This blackness reflects the shadow that has crept and invaded the human soul in this victorian society. You just add rain, constant rain, all kinds of stairs and scaffoldings, misery, poverty and dirt, absolute discomfort, cold, dampness, miserable food, alcoholism, and you have it all, except must I say consumption. A miracle is possible and a miracle happens. Oliver Twist is reunited with his grandparents.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne

The David Lean Collection (Lawrence of Arabia / The Bridge on the River Kwai / A Passage to India)

Average customer rating:

Defective Product
Triple Guinness
Great Classics

The David Lean Collection (Lawrence of Arabia / The Bridge on the River Kwai / A Passage to India)
Starring: David Lean
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000AGQ72
Release Date: 2003-09-09

Amazon.com

Lawrence of Arabia
In David Lean's masterful "desert classic," Peter O'Toole gives a star-making performance as T.E. Lawrence, the eccentric British officer who united the desert tribes of Arabia against the Turks during World War I. Lean orchestrates sweeping battle sequences and breathtaking action, but the film is really about the adventures and trials that transform Lawrence into a legendary man of the desert. Lean traces this transformation on a vast canvas of awesome physicality; no other movie has captured the expanse of the desert with such scope and grandeur. Equally important is the psychology of Lawrence, who remains an enigma even as we grasp his identification with the desert. Perhaps the greatest triumph of this landmark film is that Lean has conveyed the romance, danger, and allure of the desert with such physical and emotional power. It's a film about a man who leads one life but is irresistibly drawn to another, where his greatness and mystery are allowed to flourish in equal measure. --Jeff Shannon

The Bridge on the River Kwai
Director David Lean's masterful 1957 realization of Pierre Boulle's novel remains a benchmark for war films, and a deeply absorbing movie by any standard--like most of Lean's canon, The Bridge on the River Kwai achieves a richness in theme, narrative, and characterization that transcends genre. The story centers on a Japanese prison camp isolated deep in the jungles of Southeast Asia, where the remorseless Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) has been charged with building a vitally important railway bridge. His clash of wills with a British prisoner, the charismatic Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), escalates into a duel of honor, Nicholson defying his captor's demands to win concessions for his troops. How the two officers reach a compromise, and Nicholson becomes obsessed with building that bridge, provides the story's thematic spine; the parallel movement of a team of commandos dispatched to stop the project, led by a British major (Jack Hawkins) and guided by an American escapee (William Holden), supplies the story's suspense and forward momentum. Shot on location in Sri Lanka, Kwai moves with a careful, even deliberate pace that survivors of latter-day, high-concept blockbusters might find lulling--Lean doesn't pander to attention deficit disorders with an explosion every 15 minutes. Instead, he guides us toward the intersection of the two plots, accruing remarkable character details through extraordinary performances. Hayakawa's cruel camp commander is gradually revealed as a victim of his own sense of honor, Holden's callow opportunist proves heroic without softening his nihilistic edge, and Guinness (who won a Best Actor Oscar, one of the production's seven wins) disappears as only he can into Nicholson's brittle, duty-driven, delusional psychosis. His final glimpse of self-knowledge remains an astonishing moment--story, character, and image coalescing with explosive impact. --Sam Sutherland

A Passage to India
This adaptation of E.M. Forster's mysterious tale of British racism in colonial India turned out to be master director David Lean's final film. Subtle and grand at the same time, Lean's adaptation is faithful to the book, rendering its blend of the mystical and the all-too human with exquisite precision. Judy Davis plays a young British woman traveling in India with her fiancé's mother. While visiting a tourist attraction, she has a frightening moment in a cave--one that she eventually spins from an instant of mental meltdown into a tale of a physical attack that ruins several lives. Lean captures Forster's sense of awe at the kind of ageless wisdom and inexplicable phenomena to be encountered in India, as well as the British tendency to dismiss it all as savage, rather than simply different. --Marshall Fine

Customer Reviews:

Defective Product.......2007-05-06

I regret that I have to return the Lean collection because the disc of Lawrence of Arabia is defective. And your instruction was to return the entire set. This is not the fault of Amazon but the fault of the manufacturers - Columbia Pictures and Sony. I had purchased an identical DVD of Lawwrence from a local electronics store and discovered that the disc was corrupted shortly after the start of the film's second half. I returned the disc to the store and was given another. It was corrupted in exactly the same place. That's when I ordered the Lean collection from Amazon in the hope of getting an uncorrupted disc of Lawrence. But, sad to say, the Lawrence disc in the Amazon trio of DVDs was also corrupted in precisely the same place. I am in the process of returning the collection in the hope of gaining a refund of the more than $40.00 I paid for the collection.

Triple Guinness.......2005-10-04

BRIDGE shows us a certain kind of international filmmaking when, after the war, big budget British pictures often had to haul in an American star or two to get financing. William Holden is certainly working hard in BRIDGE, but he seems as though he's panting in overdrive trying to keep up with the effortless cool of Alec Guinness and the other British stars. This trend is even more pronounced in LAWRENCE, made at a time when the studios were all in deep crisis and each individual movie had the power to make or break the studio financing it. It was a time of huge gambles, and occasionally one or two of them would pay off handsomely.

Kevin Brownlow's life of David Lean (1996) shows how Lean came to regard Alec Guinness as a sort of touchstone for good luck, using him whenever possible. (He went into RYAN'S DAUGHTER with a foreboding that proved eerily accurate; the picture had disappointing financial results--and in Lean's view he had failed to lure in Alec Guinness and that was the reason). In LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, Lean was faced with the challenge of bringing Guinness into the movie even though he (Guinness) had desperately wanted to play Lawrence himself, and had done so to great acclaim in the play Terence Rattigan wrote for him to showcase his powers in the part (ROSS was the name of Rattigan's drama).

In today's political climate it is sometimes said that Guinness was making a fool of himself trying to play men from different, "exotic" cultural backgrounds, particularly his Indian doctor in A PASSAGE TO INDIA, and many Indians have objected, arguing that there were thousands of authentically Indian actors who might have played the part with more ease than Guinness. When I watch the movie I get a disagreeable feeling when I hear Guinness trying to put over his sing-song voice. It's like a whole volume of Edward Said flooding the screen with "I told you so." It's not that he's a bad actor, but he doesn't convince. He seems to be making fun of South Asian people by mocking their accents, not to mention their skin color. Same with LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, though not so bad. It's a thorny question and I have no answers, only to observe that Guinness was one of those proud men who think they can play anything--and mostly they're correct.

Great Classics.......2003-12-12

This is one of the best collections I own. If you love all the classic movies, definitely go for this one!

Great Adaptations - Criterion Collection (Great Expectations / Lord of the Flies / The Most Dangerous Game / Oliver Twist)

Average customer rating:

Great Adaptations - Criterion Collection (Great Expectations / Lord of the Flies / The Most Dangerous Game / Oliver Twist)
Starring: Joel McCrea , Fay Wray , Leslie Banks , Robert Armstrong , and Noble Johnson
Director: Ernest B. Schoedsack , Irving Pichel , and David Lean
Manufacturer: Criterion
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Classics | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Drama | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video

Drama | Criterion Collection | Stores | DVD | Video

Classics | Criterion Collection | Stores | DVD | Video

Boxed Sets | Criterion Collection | Stores | DVD | Video

All | Criterion Collection | Stores | DVD | Video

( G ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B0002JELNQ
Release Date: 2004-09-07

Description

Great Expectations: One of the great translations of literature into film, David Lean's, Great Expectations brings Charles Dickens' masterpiece to robust onscreen life. Pip, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, and Estella populate Lean's magnificent miniature, beautifully photographed by Guy Green and designed by John Bryan. Lord of the Flies: Lord of the Flies is famed theater director Peter Brook's daring translation of William Golding's brilliant novel. The story of 30 English schoolboys stranded on an uncharted island at the start of the "next" war, Lord of the Flies is a seminal film of the New American Cinema and a fascinating anti-Hollywood experiment in location filmmaking. As the cast relived Golding's frightening fable, Brook found the cinematic "evidence" of the author's terrifying thesis: there is a beast in us all. The Most Dangerous Game: "One of the best and most literate movies from the great days of horror," The Most Dangerous Game stars Leslie Banks as a big game hunter with a taste for the world's most exotic prey—his houseguests, played by Fay Wray and Joel McCrea. Before making history with 1933's King Kong, filmmakers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack wowed audiences with their chilling adaptation of this Richard Connell short story. Criterion is proud to present the DVD premiere of The Most Dangerous Game in a new digital transfer. Oliver Twist: Expressionistic noir photography suffuses David Lean's Oliver Twist with a nightmarish quality, fitting its bleak, industrial setting. In Dickens' classic tale, an orphan wends his way from cruel apprenticeship to den of thieves in search of a true home.

DVD:

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