In 1977, in the world of movies, everything changed.
Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind introduced us to something in the movies that we had read in Tolkien and seen in Michelangelo but never, never seen in movies.
Old Hollywood operated in a much more narrow range.
Its movies were very well done, but its serious moments were always modeled on Verdi's Aida, and its comic moments on Charlie Chaplin.
But within that scope, they did great things.
And within that scope, the direction that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg took was charted, in the point where it departed from Old Hollywood.
There was one filmmaker who did things different, and it was Walt Disney. His movies were not modified Aida and Charlie Chaplin.
By the end of the 1960's there were a whole generation of filmmakers experimenting with something different, beyond Old Hollywood.
From out of that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg would emerge.
Star Wars and Close Encounters would emerge.
But there were Old Hollywood movies that, within something close to the normal bounds of Old Hollywood, laid out masterfully just what a George Lucas and a Steven Spielberg could do with those new directions.
That indicated a direction, a cinematic vision, that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg could take farther using the experiments of the Stanley Kubricks of the late 1960's that were charting these new directions, these experiments.
Stanley Kubrick and others, in their experiments, showed a whole range of new cinematic colors.
David Lean showed what cinematic forms these bold new colors could be poured into.
This is the other half of the roots of Star Wars and Close Encounters.
Lawrence of Arabia.
Bridge on the River Kwai.
George Lucas himself tells us how he was following what he saw in David Lean's movies.
You don't have to take my word for it.
In fact, I myself am simply taking George Lucas's word for it.
Steven Spielberg has said how these were among the movies that inspired him most growing up.
George Lucas has said how he copied these movies themselves for Star Wars, even as Beethoven copied Haydn's synphonic form in his symphonies.
This is the roots of the George Lucas-Steven Spielberg revolution.
All those Stanley Kubrick-type experiments put into the cinematic form laid out by David Lean.
When Scriptwriter Lawrence Kasdan saw Lawrence of Arabia, he says he came away from the movie with a new hero.
It was David Lean.
Thank you David Lean, for showing my favorite filmmakers what they can do.
I am your artistic grandson, for I am descended artistically from George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
These are my roots too.
Thank you David Lean!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson