David Lean was born in 1908 in Croydon, England of strict Quaker parents who considered attending films to be a sin. He was considered below average as a student, and his major interest was in going to the movies secretly or indulging in photography, one of his major loves. When he was still in his teens, he joined his father's accounting office as a junior clerk. When he was nineteen, he withdrew from the family firm and allowed his interest in photography and film to guide him. With the encouragement of his aunt, he went to Gainsborough Studios and took some menial and low-paying jobs to get his chance. There was an absence of unions in those days, and this enabled him to switch jobs continually depending on the needs of the different sets. He worked as a clapper boy, camera assistant, and then third assistant director. After he worked with director Anthony Asquith, he decided that his ultimate goal was to be a director. He decided that the real essence of the film lay in editing, and so he applied for and obtained work in the editing room. He started with the most insignificant tasks and worked his way up. For a time, he was the leading news editor for Gaumont-British and the British Movietone News, adn this gave him valuable experience. He was able in this work to experiment with the juxtaposition of sound and image and thus learned and developed some of his ideas that he would later implement in his own films.
Lean switched to dramatic films, feeling that that was where his interests lay, and he began to see editing from a different point of view. He saw the manipulative power of editing in covering up mistakes made by actors and directors. He learned to give continuity to footage that had often been shot haphazardly and under pressure. He would retain control of the editing process once he became a director, and he always shot a film with the final cutting plan in his head. By the beginning of World War II, Le...