I think David lean is the best British director ever can anyone think of a better director and why?

i'm afraid i've only seen 'a passage to india' and 'in which we serve' that i know of by david lean (although there could be others) but i did enjoy both of those films. my favourite british director is mike leigh. i think he's made a terrific contribution to the world of cinema for a long time now, his movies are all works of art, i love the way he goes about achieving his results. i am an actor myself, and from south east london, and part of the reason i got into acting was because i saw his film 'meantime'. this film stars a very young phil daniels, tim roth and gary oldman, as well as pam ferris and alfred molina to name a few. if you've never seen it i suggest you do, whilst darkly depicting 80's london it shows many flaws in our society. phil daniels said that when he filmed 'meantime' they'd all go down the pub afterwards and mike leigh would make them stay in character while he took notes. brenda blethyn said that she was shopping (in character!) for another film of his and she thought to herself 'oh there's the cat-food, i may as well pick some up now' and reached out to grab a tin. at once, mike's bobble hatted head poked round the corner and said 'erm- your character doesn't have a cat!'

genius!

Okay, I'm going to disagree. While David Lean was a great director, the prize for "Best British Director" goes to Michael Powell. Although Powell didn't receive the honors that Lean did, Powell's body of work, especially the films he did with Emeric Pressburger went on to influence a generation of filmmakers, especially Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. Let's not forget that Lean edited two of Powell's films, "The 49th Parrallel" and "One of Our Aircraft Is Missing".

I believe that if "Peeping Tom" hadn't been so controversial and lead to Powell practically getting blacklisted by the British film industry, he would have gone on to greater acclaim and would have eventually won an Oscar as well as other awards.