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, Lean was one of the most skillful film editors in the British film industry. His opportunity to direct came in 1942 when Noel Coward approached him with the offer to co-direct a screenplay he had written called In Which We Serve (Castelli and Cleeland 1-3).
David Lean's films show a director in control of his material, and all elements of the filmmaking process are brought to bear in service of the ultimate goal of communicating images. Different devices may be used in different films, but all are coordinated in order to assure that they contribute to the final result. Lean's films have a strong literary content, a reflection of the origin of most of them. Lean shows the great ability to present mood through his use of setting, lighting, and links between action and place that shows how the characters feel and how the audience should feel. While Lean's plots often do involv
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