Cannes is offering few new British films this year but there will be gala screenings of the late Sir David Lean’s work, given a new lease of life thanks to digital technology. Crackles and clicks that have blighted the sound have been removed, while dirt, green spots, in the original negatives have been deleted and repaired.

Some films were so badly affected that audiences could not appreciate the poignancy of scenes because they could not see characters’ expressions. The noise on some soundtracks was so intrusive, it sounded as if someone was frying bacon in the background.

Now, half a century after Lean, who died in 1991, walked up the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival to pick up an award for Brief Encounter, two of his other classics, The Passionate Friends and This Happy Breed, are receiving gala screenings as part of the official programme.

They are among ten of Lean’s 16 feature films that have been restored by the British Film Institute and Granada International to mark the centenary of his birth. They will all be released in Britain this summer.

Valuable advice came from Ronald Meane, the writer and cinematographer who was one of Lean’s close associates and is now in his nineties. Mr Meane was able to tell the restorers about the films’ original intentions.

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