> Great Expectations is one of the best films made during the first period of director David Lean's career, when he specialized in highly literate, beautifully acted dramas and comedies shot mostly in Great Britain's film studios. He had started his filmmaking career with a series of odd jobs that led to work as an editor, first with newsreels and then with features. After editing about 24 features, he moved into the director's chair as co-director of playwright Noel Coward's flag-waving war film In Which We Serve (1942). Lean and Coward continued working together as the director adapted his plays This Happy Breed (1944), Blithe Spirit (1945) and Brief Encounter (1945). The latter film, about a couple tempted to have an extra-marital affair during the final days of World War II, brought him international acclaim and suggested to critics that England had spawned its first great film director since the appearance of Alfred Hitchcock in the 1920s. That impression was borne out by the success of Great Expectations and another Dickens adaptation, Oliver Twist (1948).

> In 1955, Lean moved into international production, filming Summertime, with Katharine Hepburn, on location in Venice. From there he would move into the type of film most associated with him, the historical epic. He would win Oscars® for his next two films, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), with the latter making Peter O'Toole a star. Those pictures, along with Dr. Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970) and A Passage to India (1984), cemented his style and influence on future filmmakers. His intimate approach to the epic, in which he built massive historical sequences out of small details that perfectly mirror the scene's underlying drama, would inspire such filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who claimed that he learned how to film the big scenes in the Star Wars films from watching Lean's work. That sense of intimacy and knack for finding just the right image run through all the director's films, accounting for the great success of even early pictures like Great Expectations.