Oscar-winning director David Lean was so obsessed with making movies that, lying on his deathbed 17 years ago, he was still determined to film "Nostromo," an epic drama based on the novel by Joseph Conrad.
"The day before he died I visited him," recalls actor James Fox, who worked with Lean on the director's final epic, 1984's "A Passage to India," and remained good friends with the filmmaker.
"The last thing he said to me was, 'I want to make this film,' " says Fox, who is now working with producer Richard Zanuck to bring "Nostromo" to the screen. "I felt that he had given himself so much to [the film]. It was the last six years of his life. The thing about David was that he seemed to live so much for his projects. . . ."
On Friday, as part of the BritWeek celebration commemorating the British consulate's 50 years in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre will present a centenary tribute to Lean hosted by film historian David Thomson, who will discuss Lean's career and influences on such directors as Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and the late Anthony Minghella. The evening will include clips and reminiscences with "Lawrence of Arabia" editor Anne V. Coates, "Great Expectations" actress Jean Simmons and Fox.
'A great storyteller'
The Cinematheque's Aero Theatre will also screen several Lean masterworks beginning May 7, including the Oscar-winning best pictures "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) and "Lawrence" (1962), the 1955 romance "Summertime" with Katharine Hepburn, the 1965 epic "Doctor Zhivago," the 1945 romance "Brief Encounter," his 1946 adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" and "A Passage to India."
"He is a great storyteller," says Gary Dartnall, who is producing the film programs for BritWeek. "He had a great visual eye, and because he used that . . . and told stories so brilliantly, they work so wonderfully today. You care about the people" in his films.
The centenary tribute and the screening series, says Thomson, will give Lean fans the opportunity see the smaller black-and-white films the director made before he turned to wide-screen epics with "Bridge."
"The quality of these films blew us away as we were looking through the material," says Thomson. "We hadn't seen some of them in a while. We are showing things that hardly have played in America, and they are ravishing. It does build up one's respect for him."
