David Lean
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"Sir David Lean", Commander of the Order of the British Empire/CBE was an English film director, producer, screenwriter and editor, best remembered for big-screen epic film/epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (film)/Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Doctor Zhivago (film)/Doctor Zhivago (1965); for perhaps the most highly regarded of all the adaptations of Charles Dickens/Dickens' novels, Great Expectations (1946 film)/Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948 film)/Oliver Twist (1948); and for the renowned romance film/romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).

Acclaimed by directors including Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick, Lean was voted 9th greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute Sight & Sound "Directors' Top Directors" poll 2002. Nominated seven times for the Academy Award for Best Director, for which he won twice for The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia. Lean has three films in the top five of the British Film Institute's BFI Top 100 British films/Top 100 British Films.

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I'm first and foremost interested in the story, the characters.

[But he earned particular attention in Hollywood for his tenacity in making the grand-scale] A Passage to India, ... the most difficult thing of my life.

I think people remember pictures not dialogue. That's why I like pictures.

I've just begun to dare to think I perhaps am a bit of an artist.