Thursday, April 24, 2008

Lean's Last

ImagePassage to India (Sony)
This, the final David Lean film, came 14 years after the debacle of Ryan’s Daughter in 1970. On firmer dramatic ground with E.M. Forster’s novel about the clash between British and Indian cultures, Lean made an epic that is a worthy valedictory cap to a mighty career, even if it doesn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with all-time Lean classics like Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago. Judy Davis and Dame Peggy Ashcroft are superb, and Ernest Day’s photography is exquisite in a film that signaled the end of an era of super-spectaculars. Its director planned to adapt Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, but he died in 1991 before he began shooting.
EXTRAS:
Producer commentary; retrospective featurettes and interviews.

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