David Lean - Later Works

Later Works

In 1970, David Lean directed Ryan's Daughter, a doomed romance set in Ireland. The film received less positive reviews than Lean's previous work and was not a smash hit at the international box office. Some critics felt the film's massive visual scale and extended running time did not suit its small-scale romantic narrative. Nonetheless, the film won two Academy Awards the following year.

From 1977 until 1980, Lean and Robert Bolt were working on a film adaptation of Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian, a dramatized account by Richard Hough of the Mutiny on the Bounty. It was originally to be released as a two-part film, one named The Lawbreakers that dealt with the voyage out to Tahiti and the subsequent mutiny, and the second named The Long Arm that studied the journey of the mutineers after the mutiny, as well as the admiralty's response in sending out the frigate HMS Pandora and her famous box in which some of the mutineers were imprisoned. Lean could not find financial backing for both films after Warner Bros. withdrew from the project; he decided to combine it into one, and even looked at a seven-part TV series, before finally getting backing from Italian magnate Dino De Laurentiis. Unfortunately for Lean, the project suffered a further setback when Bolt suffered a massive stroke and was unable to continue writing; the director felt that Bolt's involvement would be crucial to the film's success. Melvyn Bragg ended up writing a considerable portion of the script.

Lean was ultimately forced to abandon the project after overseeing casting and the construction of the $4 million Bounty replica; at the last possible moment, actor Mel Gibson brought in his friend Roger Donaldson to direct the film, as producer De Laurentiis did not want to lose the millions he had already put into the project over what he thought was as insignificant a person as the director dropping out. The film was eventually released as The Bounty.

Lean was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1973, and was knighted in 1984.

After failing to get Mutiny on the Bounty into production, David Lean embarked on his last production, A Passage to India (1984), which was released to positive reviews and received two Academy Awards. During the last years of his life, Lean was in pre-production of a film version of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. Lean assembled an all-star cast for this film, including Marlon Brando, Paul Scofield, Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole, Christopher Lambert, Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Quaid, with Georges Corraface as the title character. Lean also wanted Alec Guinness to play Doctor Monyghan, but the aged actor turned him down in a letter from 1989: "I believe I would be disastrous casting. The only thing in the part I might have done well is the crippled crab-like walk." Steven Spielberg came on board as producer, with the backing of Warner Bros., but after several rewrites and disagreements on the script, Spielberg left the project and was replaced by Serge Silberman, a respected producer at Greenwich Film Productions. The project went through several writers, including Christopher Hampton and Robert Bolt. In the end, Lean decided to write the film himself with the assistance of Maggie Unsworth, with whom he had worked on the scripts for Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and The Passionate Friends. Originally Lean considered filming in Mexico, but later decided to film in London and Madrid, partly to secure O'Toole, who had insisted he would take part only if the film was shot close to home. Nostromo had a total budget of $46 million and was just six weeks away from filming at the time of Lean's death from throat cancer. It was rumoured that fellow film director John Boorman would be taking over direction, but the production collapsed and Nostromo soon became a BBC television mini-series.