Want to know the best David Lean movies? How about the worst David Lean movies? Curious about David Lean box office grosses or which David Lean movie picked up the most Oscar nominations? Need to know which David Lean movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well, you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
This David Lean (1908-1991) movie page comes from a request by Dan, Peter, and Rebecca. Lean was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. His career spanned for almost 60 years (1928-1984). During his career, he directed 16 full-length motion pictures. From 1942 to 1955 he directed 11 of those movies. From 1957 to 1984 he only directed 5 movies…but those five movies grossed over $2 billion in adjusted gross, received 43 Oscar® nominations and won 23 Oscars®….including 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai and 1963’s Lawrence of Arabia which won the Best Picture Oscar®.
His IMDb page shows 19 directing credits from 1942-1984. This page will rank David Lean movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Shorts, documentaries and almost all of his silent films are not included in the rankings. Lean’s two uncredited movies and his one tv show were not included in the rankings.
David Lean Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
David Lean Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort David Lean movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort David Lean movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort David Lean movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort David Lean movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and many Oscar® wins each David Lean movie received and
- Sort David Lean movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above David Lean Table
- Six David Lean movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 37.50% of his movies listed. Doctor Zhivago (1965) was his biggest box office ht when looking at adjusted domestic box office gross.
- An average David Lean movie grosses $195.50 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 16 of David Lean’ movies are rated as good movies…or 100.00% of his movies. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) is his highest rated movie while Ryan’s Daughter (1970) was his lowest rated movie.
- Ten David Lean movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 62.50% of his movies.
- Seven David Lean movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 43.75% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 39.86. 12 David Lean movies scored higher than that average….or 75.00% of his movies. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) got the the highest UMR Score while The Passionate Friends (1949) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About David Lean
1. David Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey in 1908. Lean’s family were strict Quakers. As a child he was not allowed to see movies.
2. David Lean was nominated for 11 Oscars® in his career. 7 for Best Director, 2 for Best Editing and 2 for Best Screenplay. He won 2 times…..Best Director for 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai and 1963’s Lawrence of Arabia.
3. Only William Wyler (12 nominations), Martin Scorsese (8 nominations) and Billy Wilder (nominations) have more Best Director Oscar® nominations than David Lean. Lean’s 7 Best Director Oscar nominations are matched by Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Fred Zinnemann who also have 7 nominations.
4. David Lean received a Best Director Oscar® nomination for 43.75% of the movies he directed. Compare that percentage to other great directors: Spielberg 24.13%, Allen 15.21%, Scorsese 32.00%, Wyler 33.33%, Zinnemann 30.43%, Wilder 32.00% and M. Night Shyamalan 10.00%.
5. David Lean and Alec Guinness made 6 movies together. Lean gave Guinness his first credited role ever….1946’s Great Expectations. After not appearing in Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (they had a falling out)…Guinness returned in Lean’s final movie…1984’s A Passage To India.
6. David Lean directed 11 different actors in Oscar®-nominated performances: Directed 11 different actors in Oscar® nominated performances: Celia Johnson, Katharine Hepburn, Alec Guinness, Sessue Hayakawa, Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay, John Mills, Sarah Miles, Peggy Ashcroft and Judy Davis. Guinness (The Bridge on the River Kwai), Mills (Ryan’s Daughter) and Ashcroft (A Passage To India) won for their performances in one of Lean’s movies.
7. Peter O’Toole based his Oscar® nominated performance in The Stunt Man (1980) on Lean. O’Toole played a crazed movie director.
8. David Lean was married six times. He had one son.
9. David Lean was honored with the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1990.
10. David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago (1965) is the 8th biggest box office hit of all-time when looking at adjusted box office grosses.
Check out David Lean’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.
Hi! The “average gross” of directors and actors from the past and present refers to Domestic or Worldwide grosses?
Hey Petrus…..generally the adjusted grosses are North America only…on this page all the grosses shown are domestic totals. We only have two adjusted worldwide grosses for David Lean.
$239,219,378 for The Greatest Story Ever Told and
$2,011,017,668.00 for Dr. Zhivago.
Hope that helps explain our system. Good to hear from you.
I was looking at your site index for your page about your father’s favourite movies and could not find it.
So I decided to stop by your David Lean page instead to mention that last night I re-watched Lawrence of Arabia on Silver Screen Classics. It was fantastic and long. I did a review of it on Letterboxd. You were mentioned in that review.
🙂
Mmmmm…..now where did I put that page. I will have to check that out. That was my mom’s favorite page…..I know I did not delete that one. I will have to check out your Letterboxd review….glad you are enjoying Letterboxd.com. One of my favorite movie webpages.
One of my favorite directors Bruce, nice work. Lawrence of Arabia is in my top 5 films of all time. I did a hub on Lawrence ages ago, River Kwai too. Happy to see those two topping the moviescore and critics chart. A Passage to India is another favorite.
I’ve seen 11 of the 16 films you’ve listed, some of the ones I’ve missed include Summertime, This Happy Breed and Hobson’s Choice.
Doctor Zhivago was a massive success but it must have still disappointed Lean when it lost the Best Picture Oscar to The Sound of Music.
The man who restored Lawrence of Arabia in 1989, Robert A. Harris is a member of my forum and I’ve chatted with him a few times. He recently supervised a new restoration of Spartacus, another favorite film of mine.
I like the trivia you’ve added to the charts, a nice touch. Voted Up.
Hey Steve. Seems I am always talking writing about Lawrence of Arabia….so I felt it was time to finally look at the entire career of Lean. Glad to see you have no issues with “movie score”…that does not seem to happy very often….lol. Your 11 wins the tally count ….11 for you…10 for Flora and me dead last with 7. I have seen Lawrence many many times…does that count? I have not seen any of the three you mentioned either…though Flora has high praise for Hobson’s Choice. That is cool about Robert A. Harris…I bet he has some interesting stories. Glad you liked the trivia….since he only had 16 movies…finding trivia for each movie was actually pretty easy. As always…your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Hi, Bruce.
I’ve been very busy lately. Not sure if I will be able to check as often as I would like to your pages. As such, sometimes I will be several pages behind before I read them.
For some reason I thought you had already done a page on David Lean movies.
The highest ranking movie I have seen is Lawrence of Arabia at number 1.
The lowest ranking movie I have seen is This Happy Breed at number 12.
The highest ranking film I have not seen is Ryan’s Daughter at number 5.
Rankings overall:
I have seen 4 of his top 5, and 8 of his top 10.
I have seen 10 of his 16 movies.
My favourite Lean films are:
Bridge on the River Kwai
Doctor Zhivago
Lawrence of Arabia
Brief Encounter
Hobson’s Choice.
In looking at these films, I did not realize that John Mills made about as many of David Lean movies as Alec Guinness did.
Of the ones which I have not seen, most of them are the last 4 of which I know little. The other one I have not yet mentioned is A Passage to India. I have seen part of Ryaan’s Daughter, but not all of it.
Cheers,
Flora
Hey Flora….the beauty of the internet…is the pages are always here….so whenever you find time works for us. I imagine the holiday season is very busy for you….hope you have fun.
1. I have done some pages that mentioned Lawrence of Arabia….but I never got around to doing a Lean page. I did Wyler, then Lean, then Wilder….next will be Fred Zinnemann.
2. Tally count….Steve 11, Flora 10 and me at 7…back to last place for me.
3. I like your favorites….although not only have I not seen Hobson’s Choice…..I have to admit that I had not even heard of the movie before I did this page……it looks like it might be a good role for Charles Laughton…then again I think all Laughton roles were good.
4. John Mills and Lean movies together for almost 30 years…and like Guinness…Mills won his Oscar in a Lean movie. Seeing Mills and Guinness together in Great Expectations is fun to watch.
5. Of the 4 bottom movies…I think only Blithe Spirit seems like one to track down….it has gotten a little bit of a following over the years.
6. I saw Passage To India….but it was a one and done for me….it is well done….but the pace made it hard to watch.
Thanks for stopping by and talking David Lean.