David Lean

If someone asked me what was the worst film I had ever seen I always used to say "In Which We Serve".
The answer was a perverse reaction to its death and glory 2nd World War patriotism and its depiction of the ordinary bloke as rather stupid. Also its depiction of the upper crust officers as ludicrously gallant and above reproach. Noel Coward epitomised, to me, a sort of Englishness which reeked of the Public School with all its supposed values of the higher moral kind soaked in reprehensible smugness. And John Mills, with his mooney look of admiration for those above him in status, simply daft, certainly without reality softening the features or spirit of that wooden character.
I think David Lean's films improved radically when he struck out on his own, away from the domineering influence of Coward. While "Brief Encounter", a film they did together, is a film one cannot ignore - it simply imposes itself on you like a sentimental song you don't want to remember but can't help singing - I can imagine a modern audience of young people laughing at it as they might at an Eton educated politician trying to persuade them of his honesty and good intentions. The film is a mess but you can't help wading in it like a pig in 'the proverbial'.
When David Lean branched out on his own and made the Dickens films he found his feet. From then on he made success after success, popularly and critically. (Except of course for "Ryan's Daughter" which had John Mills again doing what he always did badly, trying to be someone he did not understand so playing him as a fool.)
Tomorrow David Lean would have been 100.
Probably his greatest work was "Lawrence of Arabia".
Was Noel Coward getting his own back for Lean leaving him to make 'real cinema' works when he said: "If Peter O'Toole had been any prettier they would have called the film 'Florence of Arabia".