''I think it's time that 06 9mileswamp index htm all of us movie-makers band 9 together images to get 10 rid of these crooks, 06 every images producer who Photos 06 has ever 06 9mileswamp index htm had his hands in our pockets,'' he images Photos 9 10 told a 9mileswamp 9mileswamp somewhat startled audience 10 at the images Cannes Film Festival in 1988. When index I met him to discuss producing Out of 10 Africa, which he wanted to direct, he htm instantly launched into a tirade against producers, insisting that he only wanted to 06 work index with me because I index was ''different''. But I realised that Photos his dislike was, to all intents and 9 purposes, generic. Starting as an unpaid teaboy, 9 he htm quickly worked Photos his way images Photos 9 10 through the ranks 9mileswamp htm to become one of the industry's most admired editors.

Michael Powell, with whom Lean worked on 49th Parallel, regarded him as the best film editor since D W Griffith.His early forays into directing, such as This Happy Breed, Blithe Spirit and, of course, Brief Encounter, remain satisfying enough. But it was with his two adaptations of Dickens, Great Expectations and Oliver Twist, that he first emerged as a really outstanding director. It was because of that guilt, as much as anything, that he worked his way through six marriages. For Lean was haunted by the idea of impotence, and as soon as he felt his sexual energies waning, he would be compelled to find some new woman to rejuvenate them But his sexual anxieties also energised him creatively.

''If you want to make a good movie," he said, "get yourself a new wonderful woman.''Cinema started out as a hobby, its excitement and energy a much-needed antidote to the tedious routine of schoolwork. He would return to his home in the dismal Croydon suburbs bubbling over with enthusiasm about some new movie he'd just seen in the grand cinemas of the West End. In part, this accounts for his deeply ingrained mistrust of reviewers, whom he looked on as a cerebral and malevolent tribe, forever sharpening their knives in readiness for some act of critical savagery.His parents were Quakers, and this created a legacy of guilt - notably regarding sex - which he never really managed to throw off. Lean was determined to make his career in cinema, and his father found him a job at the Gaumont studios in Shepherds Bush.