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flashback
Slowly, I think, he was being moulded to David’s way of thinking, and he went with it. I think he could see the wisdom in what David wanted to do. There was never any undue pressure on him either, because David would sooner scrub a day and do the scene the next day if things weren’t exactly right.”
Dealing with a multitude of problems that inevitably arise when shooting in the desert on 70 mm stock it is a wonder that any sort of film was completed, let alone one of the shimmering beauty that Lawrence possesses. Despite this Lean seemed keen to go with a different DP on his next venture, Dr Zhivago, favouring Nic Roeg for the role. But in the end it was Young’s assignment and he earned another Oscar for his pains.
It must have been an inevitable decision to pick the same, winning team once more for Lean’s next film, Ryan’s Daughter. But on that there were signs that the great director had lost touch with his audi- ence, and his crew became aware of an irascible side to him when he proclaimed one day that the rushes were ‘not sharp’. Eventually, seeing them on a full size screen Lean admitted they were, but it was a troubling time all round.
“David was an artist,” Day shrugs, “and some- times he just had to find something wrong. They were good times and bad times.”
A final collaboration with Lean came fourteen years later when he was hired by Lean once more - but this time as Director of Photography.
“He was really getting on by the time we worked on A Passage To India. My feeling is that David got out of his depth because the business had changed and he wouldn’t accept that. I was proud to be doing the film, of course, but it was terrible to watch him degenerate. He wasn’t the same man.”
One of the few highlights out of the film was Day’s luscious cinematography, and an Oscar nomination was the very least he deserved.
Yet to limit discussion of his work just to those Lean movies would be a considerable understatement. Over the course of a long career he has worked on a wide variety of films such as A Clockwork Orange for Stanley Kubrick, Becket, Lord Jim, Return Of The Pink Panther and You Only Live Twice.
And then he turned to directing, running sec- ond unit on a few films, and taking full responsibility on episodes of The Professionals, and the features, Green Ice and Waltz Across Texas.
“I was very satisfied with operating. I enjoyed the experience,” he smiles, “but it got to the stage where I thought I wouldn’t be able to get onto my knees and take a camera under a table all my life. And I had a lovely time directing.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
“There came a point
when everyone was going for colour and I was a black and white man.”
Photos: Judy Davis and Peggy Ashcroft in Passage To India; above, Peter O’Toole and Anthony Quinn in Lawrence Of Arabia; Eva Marie Saint, Paul Newman and Peter Lawford in Exodus (Photos courtesy Moviestore)