page_title: David Lean
section_title: International films
hierarchical_section_title: David Lean / Career / International films
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the English film director David Lean (1908–1991) in Northern Finland early in 1965, during the shooting of "Doctor Zhivago".
context_page_description: Sir David Lean CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Widely considered one of the most influential directors of all time, Lean directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India. He also directed two adaptations of Charles Dickens novels, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter.
  Originally a film editor in the early 1930s, Lean made his directorial debut with 1942's In Which We Serve, which was the first of four collaborations with Noël Coward. Beginning with Summertime in 1955, Lean began to make internationally co-produced films financed by the big Hollywood studios; in 1970, however, the critical failure of his film Ryan's Daughter led him to take a fourteen-year break from filmmaking, during which he planned a number of film projects which never came to fruition. In 1984 he had a career revival with A Passage to India, adapted from E. M. Forster's novel; it was an instant hit with critics but proved to be the last film Lean would direct.
context_section_description: Summertime (1955) marked a new departure for Lean. It was partly American financed, although again made for Korda's London Films. The film features Katharine Hepburn in the lead role as a middle-aged American woman who has a romance while on holiday in Venice. It was shot entirely on location there.
caption: Lean in Northern Finland in 1965 while shooting Doctor Zhivago.
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