David Lean

Great Expectations

Great Expectations

One of the great translations of literature into film, David Lean's Great Expectations brings Charles Dickens's masterpiece to robust on-screen life. Pip, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, and Estella populate Lean’s magnificent miniature, beautifully photographed by Guy Green and designed by John Bryan.

Film Info

  • United Kingdom
  • 1946
  • 118 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • English
  • Spine #31

Special Features

  • The original theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

New cover by Gordon Reynolds

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • The original theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

New cover by Gordon Reynolds

Great Expectations
Cast
John Mills
Pip
Valerie Hobson
Estella
Bernard Miles
Joe Gargery
Francis L. Sullivan
Mr. Jaggers
Martita Hunt
Miss Havisham
Finlay Currie
Magwitch
Alec Guinness
Herbert Pocket
Anthony Wager
Young Pip
Jean Simmons
Young Estella
Credits
Director
David Lean
Producer
Ronald Neame
Music
Walter Goehr
Editing
Jack Harris
Production design
John Bryan
Cinematography
Guy Green
Executive producer
Anthony Havelock-Allan
Screenplay
David Lean
Screenplay
Ronald Neame
Screenplay
Anthony Havelock-Allan
Screenplay
Kay Walsh
Screenplay
Cecil McGivern
From the novel by
Charles Dickens

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David Lean

Director

David Lean
David Lean

For many cinephiles, the name David Lean signifies grand moviemaking—sweeping epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. But the long and eclectic career of this legendary British director encompasses arresting intimacy as well, as evidenced by the films of his in the Criterion Collection. Among those are pictures that he was responsible for editing, early on in his work in film: some of his national cinema’s greatest hits, including Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard’s Pygmalion, Gabriel Pascal’s Major Barbara, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 49th Parallel. In the forties and early fifties, having moved to directing, he made several luminous films, including adaptations of such classic and important contemporary works from the stage and page as Harold Brighouse’s Hobson’s Choice, Noël Coward’s Still Life (Brief Encounter, in the film version), and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. All are graced by evocative, shadowy black-and-white cinematography and elegantly restrained compositions. Summertime, his gorgeous 1955 Technicolor trip to Venice with Katharine Hepburn, marked a turning point in his career: the sun-dappled location shoot was galvanizing for Lean, and the remainder of his films, from The Bridge on the River Kwai to A Passage to India, could be considered outdoor spectacles. Yet Lean’s deep interest in complex characters, his brilliant way with actors, and his classic sense of storytelling were never trumped by scale.