DAVID LEAN’S
|
BRITISH
LITERATURE
|
A PAPER BY HENRIQUE GUERRA*
|
| |
INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is
to present an overview of the literary in David Lean’s movies. Literature –
especially British – becomes motion pictures in practically every one of the 16
movies of his meaningful career as a director. It is my intention to analyze
the literary liaisons that helped to make Lean’s filmography one of the richest
in the history of cinema. From In Which
We Serve (1942) to A Passage to India
(1984), the epic moviemaker – who died in 1991 before shooting Conrad’s Nostromo – either adapted the work of or
collaborated with great British writers and playwrights, such as Noel Coward,
Charles Dickens, Terence Ratting, Robert Bolt, and E. M. Forster. He also
turned into film a book called Seven
Pillars of Wisdom, by T. E. Lawrence, a compelling account of the Arab
Revolt. It is no wonder that a director obsessed with telling good stories and
exploring human emotions would use novels and plays as sources, but is my
intention to prove that David Lean, maybe without planning to do so, built a
solid portrait of what British literature is capable of.
In Which We Serve (Nosso barco,
nossa alma, 1942) The very first Lean’s movie as director was written and
starred by Noel Coward, a popular playwright whose literary importance,
although somewhat controversial, is nowadays more and more recognized.
According to John Smart, “Noel Coward depicted and embodied the moneyed and
escapist world of the 1920s and 1930s.” The most notorious qualities of In Which We Serve – a well written
script, a nice cutting and an economical direction – would become Lean’s
trademark along his not so prolific career. Lean directed only sixteen movies
throughout five decades, and only one of these movies (Madeleine, the true story of an enigmatic Scottish woman) was not
either based on a literary source or written by a playwright (see Table). In Which We Serve tells in flashbacks
the story of British ship HMS Torrin and its crew. One of the sailors is played
by Richard Attenborough, in his screen debut. Lean manages to accomplish a war
movie whose focus is not the thrill of the battles, but the human drama.
This Happy Breed (Esta
nobre raça, 1944)
This adaptation of the homonymous Noel Coward play depicts
the life of a working class family after the First World War and across the
1920s.
The title comes from Shakespeare’s Richard
III:
This happy breed of men, this little
world/
This precious stone set in the silver sea/
(…)/Against the envy of less
happier lands/
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
|
Sources and screenwriters of
David Lean’s movies
Movie
|
Source
|
Screenwriter(s)*
|
In
Which We Serve (1942)
|
True
story of destroyer HMS Kelly and captain Mountbatten in Battle of Crete
(1941).
|
Playwright
Noel Coward
|
This
Happy Breed (1944)
|
1939
play by Noel Coward
|
Noel
Coward, from his own play. Adaptation: David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony
Havelock-Allan
|
Blithe
Spirit (1945)
|
Homonymous
Noel Coward’s 1941 play
|
Noel
Coward, from his own play. Adaptation: David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony
Havelock-Allan
|
Brief
Encounter (1945)
|
1936
one-act play Still Life, by Noel Coward
|
David
Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan
|
Great
Expectations (1946)
|
1860-61
novel by Charles Dickens
|
David Lean, Ronald Neame, Anthony Havelock-Allan,
Kay Walsh, Cecil McGivern
|
Oliver
Twist (1948)
|
1838
novel by Charles Dickens (his second one)
|
David Lean and Stanley Haynes
|
The
Passionate Friends
(1949)
|
1913 H.
G. Wells’s The Passionate Friends: A Novel
|
David Lean and Stanley Haynes
|
Madeleine (1950)
|
True
story
|
Stanley Haynes and Nicholas Phipps
|
The
Sound Barrier
(1952)
|
Loosely
based on newspaper articles and real-life story of pilot Geoffrey de
Havilland, Jr.
|
Playwright
Terence Rattigan
|
Hobson’s
Choice
(1954)
|
Harold
Brighouse’s 1916 homonymous play
|
David Lean, Norman Spencer, Wynyard Browne
|
Summertime (1955)
|
Based
on the 1952 play
Time of
the Cuckoo by
Arthur Laurents
|
David Lean and H.E. Bates
|
The
Bridge
on the
River Kwai (1957)
|
Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai, 1952 Pierre Boulle novel,
translated into English by Xan Fielding (1954).
|
Credited: Pierre Boulle
Actual: Michael Wilson, Carl Foreman
(credited posthumously because in the fifties they were in the so-called
“Hollywood blacklist”)
|
Lawrence
of Arabia
(1962)
|
Seven
Pillars of Wisdom, 1926
account of T. E. Lawrence real adventures during the Arab Revolt (1917-8)
|
Playwright Robert Bolt (dialogues) &
Michael Wilson (storyline) (Michael Wilson received credit only in 1995).
|
Doctor
Zhivago
(1965)
|
1957
Boris Pasternak’s novel
|
Robert
Bolt
|
Ryan’s
Daughter
(1970)
|
Loosely
based on 1856 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
|
Robert
Bolt
|
A
Passage
to India
(1984)
|
1924 E.
M. Forster’s novel
|
David
Lean
|
Blithe Spirit (A mulher do outro mundo, 1945) The title – based on the
homonymous play by Noel Coward – has a strong literature link: it comes from
the first line of Percy Shelley’s poem called To a Skylark: Hail to thee,
blithe Spirit! (1820). Here the blithe spirit is not a singing bird but the
ghost of a dead wife, accidentally brought to our dimension through the work of
a hilarious psychic (Margaret Rutherford). And though both the play (which after
its premiere in 1941 run for a total of 1,997 performances in a row) and the
movie are played for laughs, the ghost story pays homage to English tradition
in fantasy literature. Writer Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) and his wife
Ruth invite Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to promote a séance in their
house. But besides being a research source for his new mystery book, the
session ends up opening a way for Elvira, his dead first wife, to return from
the “other world”. The script takes advantage of this bizarre situation to
explore the funny side of a domestic environment where two wives coexist. Even
though Elvira actually cannot be seen by Ruth, poor Charles see and hear both
of them perfectly, and sometimes he addresses Elvira but Ruth thinks he is
addressing herself. In a way, Blithe
Spirit can be considered a bit of a dark comedy, term coined by André
Breton in his 1939 book Anthologie de l'humour noir, as a reference for some works of writers such as Jonathan Swift
and Edgar Allan Poe. Both the movie and the play confirm what Lahr (quoted by
Dietrich) wrote: “Only when Coward is frivolous does he become in any sense
profound”.
Brief Encounter (Desencanto, 1945) Story of a
housewife who casually meets a doctor on a tearoom by a rail station. Even
though both are married to others, soon it becomes a routine their innocent
meetings every Thursday. In the beginning, the most sinful thing they do
together is to see sensationalist movies such as Flames of Passion from the mezzanine
of the theater. As it was bound to happen, the innocence gives space for doubt
and mixed feelings. In other words, love. This deep, sensitive study about
guilt and betrayal raises questions about what people think is right or wrong. Brief Encounter, while remaining a
classic of delicate intimism and (not so) suffocated desire, also is a good
example why
Coward was a major playwright of the 1920s
and early 1930s. Despite his limitations, he held up a mirror to his times
reflecting the wit and gaiety of his generation and class. His plays present a
glamorous wasteland with a mixture of fascination and loathing (SMART, 2001).
The partnership between David Lean and
Noel Coward represents a kind of “first cycle” in Lean’s filmography. It
resulted in four movies or 25% of Lean’s career. To Coward, these four movies
meant a broader audience for his drama literature. Until today people can be in
touch with his work through Lean’s movies. To Lean, the way was paved to his
two adaptations of one of the most important British novelists: Charles
Dickens.
Great Expectations (Grandes esperanças, 1946) +
Oliver
Twist (1948) Although some scholars dislike the liberties taken by Lean
with his adaptations of Dickens’s works, some consider them as models. Regina
Barreca, a feminist professor of English Literature who wrote books like Perfect Husbands (& Other Fairy Tales):
Demystifying Marriage, Men & Romance and also a chapter in the book Dickens on Screen, clearly belongs to
the first category, as we can notice by this excerpt:
In his 1946 Great
Expectations David Lean didn't film Dickens's novel. He remade the novel
into David Lean's film. Lean completely reversed the thrust of Dickens's story.
In the novel (…) the male–male bonds (…) structure the protagonist's moral and
social development, and completely determine the book's final third. But with
Lean the most interesting relationship is not among men but between women,
Estella and Miss Havisham (BARRECA, 2003).
On the other hand, David Thomson (movie critic
who authored more than 20 books) has a more positive approach: “Dickens texts
are adapted, but the films are vivid movies in their own right as well as the
basis for decades of BBC television adaptations of classic literature”
(Thomson, 2008).
The Passionate Friends (A história de uma mulher,
1948) This semester in our English course we have studied a short story by H.
G. Wells, The Crystal Egg. However,
the themes of Wells’ novels and stories are not limited to invisible men, wars
of worlds, time machines, islands of lost souls and crystal eggs. He, as Lean,
was also keen on an “intensely modern theme”, as New York Times literary critic
L. M. Field put in 1913, the same year in which the book was published. This
theme, of course, is “woman and sex” (Field, 1913). That this was one of Lean’s
favorite topics is easily proven, not only because of his film curriculum (e.
g., Brief Encounter, Summertime, The Passionate Friends, Ryan’s
Daughter), but also for his own biography: as David Thomson put it, Lean
was “the possessor of six wives (not at the same
time)”. The Passionate Friends (both novel and film) deals about a love
triangle whose main angle is Lady Mary. A key scene is well described in L. M.
Field’s review: “(…) high up among the Alps, the long-parted ‘passionate
friends’ meet and talk together as though
their bodies were dead and gone – when, its stultifying accompaniment left
behind, the real bond between them displays itself in all its beauty.” Author
of an interesting article about Lean’s sexual life, George Macnab pointed out:
“In The Passionate Friends (1949),
Lean explores such themes as sexual jealousy and adultery with far more depth
than in any of his earlier films – even Brief
Encounter (1945).”
Madeleine (As cartas de Madeleine,
1950) A forgotten cinematographic gem, Madeleine Smith’s true, sad history is
told by Lean with almost painful sobriety and restraint. The pair of
screenwriters – Stanley Haynes, also producer, and Nicholas Phipps – did a
meticulous research of the 1857 trial and succeeded in building a portrait of a
woman could be described either as manipulative and frivolous or as troubled
and passionate, or these four altogether. Ann Todd – by that time, Mrs. David
Lean – superbly gives life to a multifaceted character. A little before the
movie premiere, Lean showed it to his friend Noel Coward, who after the private
session commented that Lean should give the viewers a definite solution. But in
retrospective this very fact (the “open ending”), while telling a lot about
Lean’s perspective and style, also raises the artistic values of the work.
Recently the case of Madeleine Smith regained a boom of attention, following
the release of two books in 2007: A
Scottish Murder – Rewriting the Madeleine Smith Story, by Jimmy Powdrell
Campbell, and The Strange Affair of
Madeleine Smith, by Douglas MacGowan.
The Sound Barrier (Sem barreira no céu, 1952) With
a screenplay by Terence Rattigan, based on newspaper articles, David Lean
focuses the attempts to break the sound barrier by a aircraft manufacturer, in
spite of risking the lives of pilots very close to him. The playwright deserved
a paragraph in An Outline of English
Literature, by Thornley & Roberts (1984), who claim Rattigan is “(…)
another well-known writer of traditional and successful plays” and that his
work “(…) extends from light comedy, as in French
Without Tears (1936) to more serious plays such as The Winslow Boy (1946)”.
Hobson’s Choice (Papai é do contra, 1954) The
play by Harold Brighouse and the adaptation by David Lean tell the story of
shoemaker Henry Hobson, a widower, and his three daughters, who help him in the
workshop, along with Willie, a talented bootmaker. The daughters do not receive
a penny and Willie is underpaid. The name of the protagonist, in the movie
played by Charles Laughton, is a word play with the popular expression “Hobson’s
choice”, whose origin allegedly is the following. A stable owner called Hobson,
in order to establish a horse rotation, offered his customers, among his many
horses in the stall, only one horse: the one nearest the door. So “Hobson’s
choice” means something as “take or leave it”. And what will be Henry Hobson’s
choice when Maggie, his older, most useful daughter ask for a wage and for a
permission to marry his employee? Recently another play by Harold Brighouse,
The Game, was revived by the theatrical company of actor Barrie Rutter, who
wrote an article about it, whose first sentences are:
Harold Brighouse was a star writer in his
time. Today, he’s viewed as a one-play wonder. Everyone knows Hobson’s Choice,
his tale of a Salford cobbler outfoxed by his daughters. A hit in New York
before its London debut in 1916, the play has been studied by generations of
schoolchildren and was made into a classic film by David Lean (RUTTER, 2010).
Summertime (Quando o coração floresce, 1957) “You are a hungry child to whom someone brings ravioli. ‘But I don't want ravioli, I want beefsteak!’ You are hungry, Miss Samish! Eat the ravioli!”. It’s impossible to watch this movie and forget this very Italian advice. Undoubtedly, Katharine Hepburn’s character ate the ravioli, even though the ravioli was a handsome – but married – Italian (Rossano Brazzi). The movie is an adaptation of the play The Time of the Cuckoo, by Arthur Laurents, adapted by Lean, with the help of the writer H. E. Bates. Arthur Laurents (who also wrote scripts for important movies such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Robert Wise’s West Side Story) studies the dilemma of a middle-aged woman who falls in love with a married Italian during a trip to Veneza.
Lawrence of
Arabia (Lawrence da Arábia,1962) “The standard
path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the
formula represented in the rites of passage: separation – initiation – return”. The accomplishments of British
officer T. E. Lawrence during the First World War Arab front comprise a good
example of the formula described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Peter O’Toole’s face immortalized
on screen the representation of T. E. Lawrence, whose experiences in desert
wars embody Campbell’s archetypal hero. The fact that Lieutenant Lawrence
adopted Arabian clothes just emphasized his initiation, and the sequence of
scenes portraying his coming back to report his deeds after the conquest of
Akaba and his promotion to Major surely represents an archetypal glorious
return. The production of this movie started with Sam Spiegel’s purchasing of
the screen rights to Seven Pillars of
Wisdom from T. E. Lawrence’s brother. The book published in the 1920s, a
classic of British non-fiction literature, also “one of the best books on
World War I – and still full of handy hints on how to wage a guerrilla war”,
became 80 years after a “best-seller among American officers in Iraq” (Suter,
2010). Film critic David Thomson alerts that “while Lawrence
of Arabia is grand and beautiful, don’t expect it to know who Lawrence
was, let alone what really happened in his Middle East”. The movie marked the
first of three collaborations between David Lean and Robert Bolt, the
playwright who penned A Man for All Seasons.
Bolt would also write the screenplay of Doctor
Zhivago and Ryan’s Daughter.
The Bridge on
the River Kwai (A ponte do rio Kwai, 1957) + Doctor
Zhivago (Doutor Jivago, 1965) These movies undoubtedly helped to
popularize worldwide two novels originally not written in English. As a
translator myself, I must highlight this important fact. These texts were
indeed translated twice: first into English by literary translators, and then
into screen, by great English screenwriters. Do the resulting texts and movies
contribute to British literature? Yes, if you consider translations as valuable
literary works that promote cross-cultural dialogue and understanding, because
“it is in their literature (…) that living cultures store their capital:
in order to understand another culture, you have to read its books” (CEATL,
2008). It is
common that books turned into films sell more and more editions, in a
“virtuous” cultural cycle. So David Lean helped Pasternak and Boulle to sell
more books, even though the translators remained invisible, since
in a translated work, it is hard to
identify the translator’s personal artistic contribution, and, as long as the
public remains unaware of that contribution, translators have no symbolic
capital with which to enter the market as ‘cultural entrepreneurs’ (CEATL,
2008).
Ryan’s Daughter (A filha de Ryan, 1970) In Ireland, during the First World War, Rosy
Ryan, the wife of a schoolmaster, falls in love with an English military
officer. A kind of Irish Emma Bovary, Rosy Ryan uses to talk with the priest,
who all the community respects as an authoritative leader. Third movie directed
by Lean with a script by Robert Bolt. According to C. D. Innes, Bolt “was
initially hailed as the British Brecht”. Innes dedicated a section of his book
on modern British drama to analyze Bolt’s plays: Adopting the Epic Style: Robert Bolt (1924-95). He points out that
“For all the religious dimension in Bolt’s plays, his drama remains firmly on a
social, not a metaphysical level.” Not surprisingly the social consequences of
Rosy Ryan’s behavior are mercilessly depicted in Ryan’s Daughter, “an Ireland
that exists more in melodrama than reality” (Thomson, 2010).
A Passage to
India (Passagem para a Índia, 1984) According to Thomson (2010), “A Passage to India
is rather bad – it doesn’t get the E.M.
Forster ironies”. According to myself, is rather great – I have not read
E.M. Forster and watching David Lean’s movie was an illuminating,
cross-cultural, fulfilling experience. The movie is about how people can make
bonds in spite of cultural misunderstanding. The empathy between Dr. Aziz and
Mrs. Moore is almost instantaneous, and even after the accusations against Dr.
Aziz, Mrs. Moore believes in his innocence. In a way, the movie is more
optimistic than the novel, judging by what Arun Mukherjee wrote in his Oppositional Aesthetics, pretty much in
the same tone used by Chinua Achebe to scorch Joseph Conrad:
The film sweetens the imperialistic
relations of the British and the Indians to mere social misunderstanding. (….)
The novel admitted that power relationships cannot be transformed into
friendships. The film papers over this profound statement in a most awkward and
disturbing manner (MUKHERJEE, 1994).
Lean is not very much interested in
political statements; he prefers to understand the characters’ motivations and feelings.
In some aspects, Lean’s movie is even superior to the book. For example, if you
watch the movie attentively you can never say for sure if Dr. Aziz is innocent or no. And this ambiguity, this
possibility of multi-interpretation enriches the narrative, whether the Indians
like or not. By the way, a scene in A Passage to India resembles a similar
scene in Madeleine. Both movies
depict a woman crossing an enraged crowd inside a carriage in her way to court.
Madeleine, as the defendant; Adela, as the accuser.
FINAL
CONSIDERATIONS
In order to write this work I watched 10 of the 16 David Lean’s movies in a couple
of weeks. Throughout this process my knowledge about movies improved a lot –
but also my knowledge about English Literature. Movie by movie, I showed the
existence of a “two-way road” between David Lean’s filmography and British
Literature. One needs just take a look on the Table of page 3 to confirm this
assertion. Before ending this paper, I must thank Professor Elaine
Indrusiak for screening during the English Literature course, in a two-class
session, David Lean’s A Passage to India.
The first session was attended by around twenty students, and the second by
only six. The fact motivated me to choose the topic for my final paper. Maybe
it was just a coincidence, maybe not. Surely there’s no account for tastes, but
maybe my colleagues failed to do what General Allenby was capable to do when he
promoted T. E. Lawrence to Major. Robert Bolt’s screenplay reads:
Lawrence:
You’re a clever man, sir.
General
Allenby: No, but I know a good thing when
I see one.
WORKS CITED
BARRECA,
Regina. David Lean's Great
Expectations. In: Dickens on
Screen (pp. 39-44). Washington, DC: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Chapter Extract. Online. 26 Nov. 2011. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511484827.004
FIELD, L. M.
H. G. Wells: Intensely Modern Theme of
His “Passionate Friends”. The New York Times. Published: November 2, 1913.
Online. 26 Nov. 2011. Available:
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1913/11/02/100284510.pdf
INNES, C. D.
Modern British Drama: the twentieth
century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
MACNAB, Geoffrey. Brief encounters: How David Lean's sex life
shaped his films: was the director's chaotic love life responsible for some of his
greatest films? The Independent. Published: 29 Jun.
2008. Online. 26 Nov. 2011. Available:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/brief-encounters-how-david-leans-sex-life-shaped-his-films-854957.html
MUKHERJEE,
Arun. Oppositional Aesthetics: Reading
from a Hyphenated Space. Chapter 5, The Third World in the Dominant Western
Cinema: Responses of a Third World Viewer (pp. 39-48). Toronto: TSAR
Publications, 1994.
RUTTER, Barrie. A Playwright of
Two Halves: Harold Brighouse. The Northern Broadsides founder
on reviving a football play. The Arts Desk. Published: 14 September 2010.
Online. 27 Nov. 2011. Available:
http://www.theartsdesk.com/theatre/playwright-two-halves-barrie-rutter-harold-brighouse
SHAKESPEARE,
William. Richard II. Act II, Scene
1. In: The Complete Works of William
Shakespeare. Online. 26 Nov.
2011. Available:
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardii/richardii.2.1.html
SMART, John.
Twentieth Century British Drama.
Cambridge: University Press, 2001.
THORNLEY, G.
C. & ROBERTS, Gwyneth. An Outline of
English Literature. Essex: Longman Group Ltd., 1984.
|
* Originally written by Henrique Guerra especially for Dr. Elaine Indrusiak's course of English Literature, UFRGS, PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL, NOVEMBER, 2011.
|
