SCFZ poll: David Lean

[flip]

Polling the films of director David Lean

The rules:

- your list can include no more than half of the Lean films you've seen, up to a maximum of 5. So if you've seen seven of his films, for example, you can list only a top 3. It's only if you've seen ten or more of his films than you can list the maximum of five.

- i'll assume ballots are ranked unless you tell me otherwise. unranked ballots are fine.

- deadline for ballots: next Friday, in seven days, whatever day that is

- if anyone is watching films for these polls, then i'll extend the deadline up to three days, if someone requests an extension

- next poll: whoever posts the first ballot in this thread is free to nominate the director we poll next, unless you've nominated in this round already (everyone should get a chance). Already nominated this round: greg x, wba, greennui, umbugbene, ofrene, mesnalty, john ryan, silga, mrcarmady, evelyn, nrh, roscoe

umbugbene created an index on letterboxd of all of our previous polls here: letterboxd.com/umbugbene/list/index-of-all-scfz-director-polls/

one rule for nominees: at least 3 scfzers need to have seen 10+ of a nominee's films, or at least 4 scfzers need to have seen at least 8 of the nom's films, so if it isn't clear if that will be the case, we'll confirm that's true before moving forward

if 24 hours pass after a poll opens, and no one eligible to nominate has posted a ballot, then i'll nominate someone, and then we'll start over, and everyone will be able to nominate again

[flip]

The Bridge on the River Kwai
Great Expectations
Hobson's Choice

seen six

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Seen 4, but none I particularly want to vote for. I strongly dislike River Kwai (i found it racist Brit-imperial smug boredom) and Lawrence (due for a rewatch, but doubt it'll change) Not much on the other two I've seen (Great Expectations, Brief Encounter) though I don't have a strong antipathy.

[Roscoe]

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
HOBSON'S CHOICE
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
BLITHE SPIRIT -- mainly for preserving the genius of Margaret Rutherford's Madam Arcati, one of the glories of the cinema

A little too obviously canonical in the first two, I suppose, whatever. These for me are Lean's best. A top six might include the under-rated RYAN'S DAUGHTER, one of those Not Nearly As Bad As Everyone Says films. Certainly not ZHIVAGO.

[MrCarmady]

Seen 3.

Lawrence of Arabia

[Umbugbene]

Seen 15

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Brief Encounter
3. A Passage to India
4. Passionate Friends
5. Great Expectations

[ofrene]

seen 3

Brief Encounter

[brian d]

seen 5

summertime
lawrence of arabia

[mesnalty]

Seen 8:

1. Brief Encounter
2. The Passionate Friends
3. Great Expectations
4. Lawrence of Arabia

[Curtis, baby]

seen 3

Bridge on the River Kwai

[Curtis, baby]

"A LEAN NIGHT!"

who gets the reference??

[john ryan]

I'm a sucker for his epics.

seen 16
1. Bridge on the River Kwai
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. Brief Encounter
4. Doctor Zhivago
5. A Passage to India

[Caracortada]

Seen 10. Memorable for his epic romances and novel adaptations with a lot of attention for the natural environment, bright blue eyes and colourful secondary characters.

1. Ryan's Daughter
2. Doctor Zhivago
3. Brief Encounter
4. Great Expectations
5. Oliver Twist

[greennui]

6.

Brief Encounter
Blithe Spirit

[Holymanm]

Brief Encounter

...and seen Lawrence (numerous times), which was also great. But I saw Brief Encounter in an old theatre built way before the movie even came out, and in a city that actually has trains, so it was quite the show. Might have A LEAN NIGHT and watch Bridge on the River Kwai eventually - I've read the book already, but the book is about three pages long and the movie three hours, so I figure it's a little different. Possibly they literally play a full bridge match on the river there?

[nrh]

summertime
brief encounter
blithe spirit
ryan's daughter

don't rate the epics that highly but have seen them long enough ago that i might be totally wrong. wish he had been able to make his version of mutiny on the bounty.

[rischka]

BRIEF ENCOUNTER

great expectations
summertime
hobson's choice

seen 9 including the epics with o'toole and guinness a whole bunch of times.

my dad loved bridge on the river kwai. never made it through ryan's daughter tho i tried. ditto dr zhivago

[wba]

01. The Bridge on the River Kwai

Lean seen: 2

[oscarwerner]

seen 9.
My votes go to:
1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
2. Brief Encounter (1945)
3. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
4. A Passage to India (1984)

[flip]

seen 5

brian, you can pick our next director if you want to!

[brian d]

any chance on marcel l'herbier? i have 10.

[nrh]

only have 5 l'herbier but would be very interested in a poll just to see what everyone picks

[Umbugbene]

I have 7 L'Herbiers. Excellent director.

[flip]

if one other person has 7+, we can go with l'herbier, with the extended rules - i can't help unfortunately

[rischka]

i have six

[Umbugbene]

#WeAreAntifa

L'Herbier was also Antifa La nuit fantastique is IMO the best of the anti-Nazi allegories made in occupied France.

[rischka]

ooooh then i'll soon have seven, thx!

[...]

Coming so soon after the Preminger poll, it strikes me that Lean and Otto have some vague similarities. Both take a somewhat distant, quasi-objective view of the constant of individual motivations and actions in times of shifting social context, most notably in their big sweeping dramas, but where Preminger tends to keep himself removed more from strong judgement of the individuals, noting more their effect on the social changes they swept up in, Lean more keeps his distance from the societal changes, preferring to focus more on the constant of the emotions and actions of the people caught by events, at least that seems to inform the way they push the audience response.

For Lean, that seems to give his movies a sense of the large scale sociopolitical movements being of secondary importance to individual wants, where the former is most noted for the effect it has on the latter. The audience is led more to judge the large scale questions through a narrow lens, where in Preminger it's more the audience is asked to see the large scale events as being informed by the individuals, but not to be judged by that alone as the motivations of all those involved are conflicted by personal history.

In their smaller scale films, some of this still seems to apply, but to a more contained dramatic effect, fit to the stories. Lean leans a bit into the stiff upper lip Brit thing, where he draws out the emotions of a scene in how the individual desires are under pressure by some events out of their control that need to be ridden out with pluck to their necessary end, whether ideal or otherwise, comic or tragic. It works well enough for him and tends to give his movies an odd sort of shape, where by not controlling events, the characters are confronted by the unexpected, leading to something of a rhythm of audience grabbing scenes where the characters are thrown from their paths or faced with something beyond their ken.

In Preminger it's often more the conflict that arises from values/knowledge forced into opposition by events, where the audience has been shown the differing points of view running towards each other on the same tracks and awaits their collision. Preminger's subject matter tends to suggest a underlying set of values of a somewhat indefinite source, since the desire to push the envelope as he did carries some sense of a kind of anti-conservative bias on its own, where Lean's stories seem more chosen to make the scale of the conflict overwhelming and therefore "hard to judge" in terms of the perspective of the films in some important sense, other than in rooting for the main characters perhaps, but to sometimes opposed ends, leading to the unhappy or mixed results. Lean seems more primarily a romantic and Preminger more a constructivist point of view. At least that's some of my initial thoughts on each, where I hadn't considered either of them too closely before. (Which is why Preminger is hard to talk about in "auteurist" terms as constructivism is at some odds with the "personal" pov auteurism favors.)

Great Expectations
Bridge on the River Kwai
Blithe Spirit
Brief Encounter
Lawrence of Arabia

[flip]

ooooh then i'll soon have seven, thx!

will you be watching the seventh this week? if yes, i'll start up a l'herbier poll today

[rischka]

i started watching it last night