David Lean, certainly one of the greatest British directors of all time no matter what the revisionists say, would have been 100-years-old yesterday.
To mark the occasion, New Yorker critic Anthony Lane has written a mammoth appreciation of the man and his career, including an excellent analysis of arguably the single greatest cut in movie history when Lawrence blows out that match.
He also reminds us of Noel Coward’s observation of the film after attending its premiere: “if Peter O’Toole had been any prettier, they’d have had to rename it Florence of Arabia.”
