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Great Expectations

  • Director: David Lean
  • Year: 1946 
- We're getting a few new classic directors entering the list this year (although both Lean and Ford and been working for a while by this point). Great Expectations wouldn't seem to have much in common with Lawrence of Arabia for a David Lean neophyte, but it is an excellent film. Lean seems to dial directly into the right level of melodrama for a Charles Dickens classic, and the film veers between Gothic horror and mannered period drama in just the right ways to make for a really fun movie, especially if like me you didn't know much about the source material. Look out for a young Alec Guiness (with ridiculous curled up hair). I was struck by many plot similarities between this and Les Miserables, which were published within a year of each other on both sides of the pond.  

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