Bookshelf

| browse books |
books
 

| book details |

David Lean: Filmmaker and Philosopher

By (author) Professor Lydia Goehr

| on special |

normal price: R 786.95

Price: R 747.95


| book description |

David Lean’s extraordinary films work philosophically through the modern reproductive and transportive technologies of sight and sound: through trains, planes, ships, and automobiles, from one perspective, and through the modern technology of the radio and gramophone, from another. Lean’s musical motifs are known worldwide: Lara’s theme in Zhivago; the Colonel Bogey March in Kwai; Estella’s motif in Great Expectations; Rosy’s motif in Ryan’s Daughter; Lawrence’s motif for his adventure in Arabia, and of course Rachmaninoff’s pounding chords in Brief Encounter. When, however, Lean described his cutting of pictures as akin to how music flows through pictures, 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 Goehr’s new book tracks the soundscape in Lean’s films not only through the musical scores composed for the films, but also, and more, through the technology of radio and gramophone that, at the start of Lean’s career, were becoming indispensable household items for the home. The book begins and ends with a motif running from the early more domestic films locally situated in the English home to the later more extensive epics of colony, commonwealth, and empire. The fidelity-infidelity relationship defined by marriage extends to the loyalty-betrayal relationship regarding countries of war and peace—after which this relationship is extended to the witty British manner of making film as a perfected and not so perfected symphonic work of a great cutter’s art. Here, as few other books on Lean have emphasized, the influence of Noel Coward on Lean cannot be overestimated.

| product details |



Normally shipped | Usually dispatched in 3 to 6 weeks as supplier is out of stock
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published date | 7 Aug 2025
Language |
Format | Paperback / softback
Pages | 304
Dimensions | 214 x 138 x 20mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 376g
ISBN | 978-1-3504-2932-1
Readership Age |
BISAC |


| other options |



Normally shipped | Usually dispatched in 3 to 4 weeks as supplier is out of stock
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 1 208.95
Price | R 1 147.95 | on special |



| your trolley |

To view the items in your trolley please sign in.

| sign in |

| specials |

Exiles: Times book of the month 'Stanley Kubrick meets MR James'

Mason Coile
Paperback / softback
224 pages
was: R 520.95
now: R 468.95
Forthcoming

A terrifying locked-room mystery set in a remote outpost on Mars.

Broken Country: AMAZON'S BOOK OF THE YEAR - THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER

Clare Leslie Hall
Paperback / softback
320 pages
was: R 395.95
now: R 355.95
Available from overseas. Dispatched in aprox 4-8 weeks as local supplier is out of stock

An epic love story with the pulse of a thriller that asks: what would you risk for a second chance at first love?

Theory & Practice

Michelle de Kretser
Hardback
192 pages
was: R 415.95
now: R 373.95
Available from overseas. Dispatched in aprox 4-8 weeks as local supplier is out of stock


The Correspondent

Virginia Evans
Hardback
288 pages
was: R 495.95
now: R 445.95
Forthcoming