LEAN BACKOSCARS AHEAD?

For nearly half a century, he has made Major Motion Pictures, the sort of wide-screen, heroically scenic "classics" to which school groups flock and Oscars are solemnly awarded—the sort aficionados dismiss as lumbering white elephants. Then, last year, at seventy-six, Sir David Lean adapted E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. If s the director's first movie in fourteen years, and it proves that there is a kind of glory only a great traditionalist can achieve. Minutes after the film begins, one feels grateful for Lean's eye, for the rich color and costumes, the immaculate compositions—for the sheer, unblushing spectacle. Yet >1 Passage to India is neither gaudy nor remote. Where we might expect bombast to go with our mosques and saris and chattering mobs, Lean gives us passion, and the haunting ambiguities he unfurls remind us of his finest work: Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and his masterpiece, Lawrence of Arabia. This month, David Lean is up for the Oscars again. No one deserves them more.