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David Lean: Filmmaker and Philosopher

By (author) Professor Lydia Goehr

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normal price: R 2,922.95

Price: R 2,630.95

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| book description |

David Leanâ€™s extraordinary films enact themselves through the sights and sounds of the technologies of modernity: through trains, planes, ships, and automobiles â€“ through the radio and the gramophone. His musical motifs are known worldwide: Laraâ€™s theme in Zhivago; the Colonel Bogey March in Kwai; Estellaâ€™s motif in Great Expectations; Rosyâ€™s motif in Ryanâ€™s Daughter; Lawrenceâ€™s motif for his adventure in Arabia, and of course Rachmaninoffâ€™s pounding chords in Brief Encounter. When, however, Lean described the process of cutting pictures as akin to the music flowing through them, what sort of music or musicality had he in mind: a classical or popular music, or a way of using musical form to mix up the meaning and material of his films? Lydia Goehrâ€™s new book tracks the soundscape of Leanâ€™s films not only through their musical scores, but also through the radios and gramophones that, at the start of Leanâ€™s career, were becoming indispensable household commodities. The book begins and ends with a motif, running from the early domestic films situated in the English home, to the subsequent extensive epics of colony, commonwealth, and empire. The fidelities and infidelities of the domestic world are traced across to the loyalties and betrayals of nations in war and peace â€“ dualities that are bound up in this book with the witty British filmmakerâ€™s art itself