Lawrece of Arabia 1962 movie Review

Lawrence of Arabia
Directed by David Lean
Writing Credits T.E. Lawrence ... (writings)
Robert Bolt Michael Wilson ... (screenplay)
Cast
Peter O'Toole ... T.E. Lawrence
Alec Guinness ... Prince Faisal
Anthony Quinn ... Auda Abu Tayi
Jack Hawkins ... General Allenby
Omar Sharif ... Sherif Ali
José Ferrer ... Turkish Bey
Anthony Quayle ... Colonel Brighton
Claude Rains ... Mr. Dryden
Arthur Kennedy ... Jackson Bentley
Donald Wolfit ... General Murray
I.S. Johar ... Gasim
Gamil Ratib ... Majid
Michel Ray ... Farraj
John Dimech ... Daud
Zia Mohyeddin ... Tafas
Howard Marion-Crawford ... Medical Officer (as Howard Marion Crawford)
Jack Gwillim ... Club Secretary
Hugh Miller ... R.A.M.C. Colonel A film review by Robert Marley - Copyright © 2000 Filmcritic.com
Being the self-proclaimed professional film critic that I am, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I had not seen Lawrence of Arabia (just out in a special DVD edition) until only recently. After all, it’s considered by just about everyone to be the masterpiece epic of director David Lean, who also directed films such as Bridge on the River Kwai , and Doctor Zhivago So one day, a friend of mine loaned me a copy of the video and I sat down and watched it. I was initially skeptical that something made almost 40 years ago would be able to keep my attention for the butt-numbing 3 1/2 hours of its duration. But now I fully understand why this has become the film that other epic films are judged against -- the winner of seven Academy Awards in 1963 for Best Picture, Director, Editing, Cinematography, Art Direction, Music, and Sound. After watching the film again, I am convinced that it is simply one of the finest works of cinematic genius to ever illuminate the big screen.
Based on the autobiographical writing of British officer T.E. Lawrence during World War I, Lawrence of Arabia depicts Lawrence (played by then-unknown actor Peter O’Toole) as a lieutenant lacking any sort of military discipline whatsoever. Bored with his assignment of coloring maps for the British Army in a dimly lit headquarters building, Lawrence jumps at the opportunity to be re-assigned as an observer for an Arabian prince fighting against the Turkish army. Lawrence quickly sees just how caring and great these desert dwelling people can be and ends up rallying the various tribes together to fight the Turks and help the British turn the tide of World War I.

Shot in Panavision’s famed Super 70mm format, the film beautifully illustrates the definition of the word epic. It is absolutely breathtaking. Using stunning cinematography, costuming, and direction, shot in the most uninhabitable location on the face of the earth, I can only imagine what it must have been like to sit in a theater in 1962 and watch this story unfold before my eyes. Every shot is choreographed as a portrait -- a living tribute to a great land. David Lean put his reputation on the line to get this film completed, and the fact that it was even greenlit in the first place says something about the ideology of the motion picture industry at the time, a far cry from its pathetic, uncreative existence today.

After watching the film, the first thing that came to my mind was, “I’ve got to do a remake of this film!” But then I thought about trying to pitch the idea to a modern-day movie executive: “Okay, it’s going to be almost four hours long and shot over three months on location in the Sahara desert. We are going to need to blow up a full-size train because computer-generated effects probably wont do it justice. And we are not going to use any big stars, and won't have any female actors since there's no love story.”

Yes, my friends, the velvet curtain fell on the golden-era of Hollywood a long time ago. But at least we still have the proof to show all would-be producers and directors out there just how good a film can be.
Academy Awards, USA 1963
Winner Best Picture Sam Spiegel
Best Director David Lean
Best Cinematography, Color Freddie Young
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color John Box John Stoll Dario Simoni
Best Sound John Cox (Shepperton SSD)
Best Film Editing Anne V. Coates
Best Music, Score - Substantially Original Maurice Jarre
Nominee Best Actor in a Leading Role Peter O'Toole
Best Actor in a Supporting Role Omar Sharif
Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted Robert Bolt Michael Wilson

Golden Globes, USA 1963
Winner
Best Motion Picture - Drama
Best Supporting Actor Omar Sharif
Best Director David Lean
Best Cinematography - Color Freddie Young
Most Promising Newcomer - Male Omar Sharif
Most Promising Newcomer - Male Peter O'Toole
Nominee
Best Actor - Drama Anthony Quinn
Best Actor - Drama Peter O'Toole
Best Original Score Maurice Jarre

BAFTA Awards 1963
Winner
Best British Actor Peter O'Toole
Best British Film
Best British Screenplay Robert Bolt
Best Film from any Source
Nominee Best Foreign Actor Anthony Quinn
R Ebert
What a bold, mad act of genius it was, to make “Lawrence of Arabia,” or even think that it could be made. In the words years later of one of its stars, Omar Sharif: “If you are the man with the money and somebody comes to you and says he wants to make a film that's four hours long, with no stars, and no women, and no love story, and not much action either, and he wants to spend a huge amount of money to go film it in the desert--what would you say?”

The impulse to make this movie was based, above all, on imagination. The story of “Lawrence” is not founded on violent battle scenes or cheap melodrama, but on David Lean's ability to imagine what it would look like to see a speck appear on the horizon of the desert, and slowly grow into a human being. He had to know how that would feel before he could convince himself that the project had a chance of being successful.

There is a moment in the film when the hero, the British eccentric soldier and author T.E. Lawrence, has survived a suicidal trek across the desert and is within reach of shelter and water--and he turns around and goes back, to find a friend who has fallen behind. This sequence builds up to the shot in which the shimmering heat of the desert reluctantly yields the speck that becomes a man--a shot that is held for a long time before we can even begin to see the tiny figure. On television, this shot doesn't work at all--nothing can be seen. In a movie theater, looking at the stark clarity of a 70mm print, we lean forward and strain to bring a detail out of the waves of heat, and for a moment we experience some of the actual vastness of the desert, and its unforgiving harshness.

By being able to imagine that sequence, Lean was able to imagine why the movie would work. “Lawrence of Arabia” is not a simple biography or an adventure movie--although it contains both elements--but a movie that uses the desert as a stage for the flamboyance of a driven, quirky man. Although it is true that Lawrence was instrumental in enlisting the desert tribes on the British side in the 1914-17 campaign against the Turks, the movie suggests that he acted less out of patriotism than out of a need to reject conventional British society, choosing to identify with the wildness and theatricality of the Arabs. There was also a sexual component, involving his masochism.

T.E. Lawrence must be the strangest hero ever to stand at the center of an epic. To play him, Lean cast one of the strangest of actors, Peter O'Toole, a lanky, almost clumsy man with a beautiful sculptured face and a speaking manner that hesitates between amusement and insolence. O'Toole's assignment was a delicate one. Although it was widely believed that Lawrence was a homosexual, a multimillion-dollar epic filmed in 1962 could not be frank about that. And yet Lean and his writer, Robert Bolt, didn't simply cave in and rewrite Lawrence into a routine action hero. Everything is here for those willing to look for it.

Using O'Toole's peculiar speech and manner as their instrument, they created a character who combined charisma and craziness, who was so different from conventional military heroes that he could inspire the Arabs to follow him in a mad march across the desert. There is a moment in the movie when O'Toole, dressed in the flowing white robes of a desert sheik, does a victory dance on top of a captured Turkish train, and he almost seems to be posing for fashion photos. This is a curious scene because it seems to flaunt gay stereotypes, and yet none of the other characters in the movie seem to notice--nor do they take much notice of the two young desert urchins that Lawrence takes under his protection.

What Lean, Bolt and O'Toole create is a sexually and socially unconventional man who is simply presented as what he is, without labels or comment. Could such a man rally the splintered desert tribes and win a war against the Turks? Lawrence did. But he did it partially with mirrors, the movie suggests; one of the key characters is an American journalist (Arthur Kennedy), obviously inspired by Lowell Thomas, who single-handedly laundered and retailed the Lawrence myth to the English-language press. The journalist admits he is looking for a hero to write about. Lawrence is happy to play the role. And only role-playing would have done the job; an ordinary military hero would have been too small for this canvas.

For a movie that runs 216 minutes, plus intermission, “Lawrence of Arabia” is not dense with plot details. It is a spare movie in clean, uncluttered lines, and there is never a moment when we're in doubt about the logistical details of the various campaigns. Law-rence is able to unite various desert factions, the movie argues, because (1) he is so obviously an outsider that he cannot even understand, let alone take sides with, the various ancient rivalries; and (2) because he is able to show the Arabs that it is in their own self-interest to join the war against the Turks. Along the way he makes allies of such desert leaders as Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness) and Auda Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn), both by winning their respect and by appealing to their logic. The dialogue in these scenes is not complex, and sometimes Bolt makes it so spare it sounds like poetry.

I've noticed that when people remember “Lawrence of Arabia,” they don't talk about the details of the plot. They get a certain look in their eye, as if they are remembering the whole experience, and have never quite been able to put it into words. Although it seems to be a traditional narrative film--like “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” which Lean made just before it, or "Doctor Zhivago," which he made just after--it actually has more in common with such essentially visual epics as Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," or Eisenstein's “Alexander Nevsky.” It is spectacle and experience, and its ideas are about things you can see or feel, not things you can say. Much of its appeal is based on the fact that it does not contain a complex story with a lot of dialogue; we remember the quiet, empty passages, the sun rising across the desert, the intricate lines traced by the wind in the sand.

Although it won the Academy Award as the year's best picture in 1962, “Lawrence of Arabia” might have been lost if it hadn't been for the film restorers Robert A. Harris and Jim Painten. They discovered the original negative in Columbia's vaults, inside crushed and rusting film cans, and also about 35 minutes of footage that had been trimmed by distributors from Lean's final cut. They put it together again, sometimes by one crumbling frame at a time (Harris sent me one of the smashed cans as a demonstration of Hollywood's carelessness with its heritage).

To see it in a movie theater is to appreciate the subtlety of F.A. (Freddie) Young's desert cinematography--achieved despite blinding heat, and the blowing sand, which worked its way into every camera. “Lawrence of Arabia” was one of the last films to actually be photographed in 70mm (as opposed to being blown up to 70 from a 35mm negative). There was a hunger within filmmakers like Lean (and Kubrick, Coppola, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa and Stone) to break through the boundaries, to dare a big idea and have the effrontery to impose it on timid studio executives. The word “epic” in recent years has become synonymous with “big budget B picture.” What you realize watching “Lawrence of Arabia” is that the word “epic” refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzog's “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” didn't cost as much as the catering in “Pearl Harbor,” but it is an epic, and “Pearl Harbor” is not.

As for “Lawrence,” after its glorious re-release in 70mm in 1989, it has returned again to video, where it crouches inside its box like a tall man in a low room. You can view it on video and get an idea of its story and a hint of its majesty, but to get thefeelingof Lean's masterpiece you need to somehow, somewhere, see it in 70mm on a big screen. This experience is on the short list of things that must be done during the lifetime of every lover of film.

Based on Ebert's 1989 review of the restored “Lawrence,” here lengthened and revised.