Sir David Lean CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, best remembered for bringing Charles Dickens's novels to the screen with films such as Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), and for his big-screen epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan's Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984)..