DAVID Lean, director of film classics Lawrence of Arabia and Brief Encounter, has beaten Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) and chronicler of moral decline, Mike Leigh, to be voted the favourite British film director in a poll run by publisher Rough Guides and social networking site myfilms.co.uk.
The poll, conducted to coincide with the publication of The Rough Guide to Film, may have placed Lean (with 33 per cent of the vote) ahead of Boyle (27 per cent) and Leigh (22 per cent), but it's not necessarily a case of the old ones are best'. Lean's contemporary Michael Powell attracted only 9 per cent of the vote, with Nicholas Roeg not much further ahead with 11 per cent.
Rough Guides Reference Publisher Andrew Locket feels Lean may have won "because he captures a very British spirit of adventure based on real life stories", while Rough Guide to Film co-author Richard Armstrong believes it may be "nostalgia for the big real locations in Lean's work in this age of CGI."
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