Ah, they just don't make great epics like they used to! And when I was a lad, we'd walk ten miles to the movie theater. Each way! And there weren't any of those fancy flush toilets in 'em, neither! Oh, wait a minute. I'm getting carried away. Let's stick with the great epics. Lawrence of Arabia was a great film when it was released back in 1962, but, if anything, it's looking better and better. Despite all the advances in computer-generated graphics and other special effects, there's really never been an epic since this one that surpasses it in grandeur or cinematic beauty. David Lean had a special knack for such films.

Historical Background: For a man who had begun in the film industry as a nineteen-year-old tea boy at Gaumont, director David Lean (1908-1991) had come a long way indeed, by 1962. He had already swept Best Picture awards for The Bridge on the River Kwai at both the Oscars and the British Academy Awards in 1957. It was now five years later, but Lean was about to produce the veritable topper. Lean had not always been known for either war films or epics. In fact, Lean's reputation as a director had been built on character-driven small-scale films. Lean first learned his craft by directing adaptations of plays written by Noël Coward and then gained international recognition for his work by winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes for Brief Encounter (1945). He had then successfully adapted two novels by Dickens, Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). In the early fifties, he had added another string of successful films, including The Sound Barrier (1952), Hobson's Choice (1954), and Summer Madness (1955). Then, inexplicably, Lean shifted gears and turned to making big-budget epics, beginning with The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). He was riding the crest of success when the opportunity came along to film Lawrence of Arabia and what a job he did. Lawrence of Arabia provided Lean with a wonderful opportunity to combine epic grandeur with the kind of human drama on which he had cut his eye teeth.

The Story: The story of Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935) is one of those instances we hear about of truth being stranger than fiction. Nobody could have thought the story up as a piece of fiction. Lawrence, the illegitimate son of a British nobleman, had been born in Portmadoc, Wales and educated at Oxford. From 1910 to 1914, Lawrence was part of the staff of an archeological expedition that had been sent by the British Museum to Carchemish, Syria. Then war broke out and Lawrence joined the British Intelligence Service in Cairo. He received his commission as a lieutenant in 1917 and was assigned to the staff of General Sir Francis Wingate, who was later replaced by General Lord Edmund Allenby. Lawrence was a bit of an oddball in the army, being more of a poet and scholar than a soldier. Later, he would become an author. The film's story actually opens with Lawrence's tragic and premature death in a motorcycle accident at the age of just forty-seven, but between 1917 and 1935, he had so immortalized his own name that he had once (in 1922) resigned his commission and secretly joined the Royal Air Force, as a private, under a false name ("Ross") in an attempt to escape his own notoriety. Later, in 1927, he changed his name to "Shaw." In Lawrence of Arabia, we learn how this man became an adventurer of such international renown that he would have to go to such extremes trying to recover a bit of privacy.

The Suez Canal was of utmost strategic importance for the British during World War I, as it always is. You can't control the high seas if you are unable to move your shipping efficiently between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. The British had the full cooperation of the Egyptians, but on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula lay the port city of Aqaba, near the northwestern tip of what we now call Saudi Arabia. In 1917, however, Aqaba was in the hands of the Turkish Ottoman Empire and the Turks were allied with Germany. Aqaba was defended by Howitzers pointing out into the Gulf of Aqaba, making an attack on the position by sea a highly dangerous proposition. In the interior of the Arabian Peninsula, Hanith tribesmen under Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness) were staging a revolt against the Turkish occupiers, though they were badly outclassed by the Turkish weaponry. The British command in Cairo was anxious to establish contact and a cooperative relationship with Feisal, in order to keep a portion of the Turkish forces preoccupied with problems to their east. Lt. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole), with his knowledge of Arabic languages, was the obvious choice to initiate such contact, provided that his superior officers could overlook his eccentricities and shortcomings as a military man. Ultimately, the insistence of the high command's civilian advisor, Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains), settled the issue. Being tired of stuffy office work, Lawrence was delighted to take the assignment.

The first major segment of the film follows Lawrence's trek across the desert by camel, with a solitary guide. At Masturah Well, Lawrence makes his first contact with one of Feisal's tribal leaders, Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish (Omar Sharif), in a most inauspicious manner. Kharish promptly kills Lawrence's guide because the man was from another tribe and had drunk from a Harish well. Nevertheless, Lawrence follows Kharish to Wadi Safra, where Feisal's forces are precariously encamped and being subjected to strafing runs by Turkish biplanes. Feisel's people will have to move south to get out of flight range. Though Lawrence is told to keep his mouth shut by the stodgy Col. Harry Brighton (Anthony Quayle), the British officer attached to Feisel as an advisor, the visionary Lawrence ultimately speaks his mind and gains Feisel's acquiescence to a daring plan to seize Aqaba by land. It's a risky venture because it will require crossing the supposedly impassable Nefud desert ("an ocean in which no oar is dipped") with fifty men on camels.

Despite the implausibility of the endeavor, it is undertaken successfully, in the film's next segment. Along the way, Lawrence acquires two loyal servant boys, Farraj (Michel Ray) and Daud (John Dimech). Later, Lawrence distinguishes himself by risking his own life to retrieve a man lost in the desert, after falling from his steed. Lawrence thereby gains a reputation as a man with a passion for mercy. Bit by bit, the Arabs are impressed by Lawrence's ability to defy the odds. On the west side of the desert, Lawrence gains the support of Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn) and his fierce horse-mounted Bedouin warriors, though Lawrence has to execute the very man he had saved from the desert to preserve the new alliance. The Turks in Aqaba are taken totally by surprise and, unable to turn their Howitzers to the east, are quickly routed. Lawrence starts to gain an aura of mythical invincibility in the eyes of his Arab followers. He also gains their respect by his ability and willingness to adopt their customs, from salutations and language to dress and riding style.

In the film's third act, Lawrence sets off with just his two servant boys for Cairo, in order to personally deliver the strategically important news of the capture of Aqaba. It's another dangerous desert journey, this time across the parched Sinai. One of the servant boys, Daud, perishes in a pit of quicksand. The British command in Cairo is dumbfounded by Lawrence's news, but quite delighted as well. Lawrence is promptly decorated and promoted to major – and then returned to the fray, despite his mounting reservations.

In the fourth part of the story, we observe Lawrence leading various Arab tribesmen in raids against Turkish supply trains. They are easy targets for the Arab riders but the tribesmen are mainly in it for the spoils and when sated, most of the fighters return home with their loot. The attrition rate is very high in Lawrence's little army and its potential to threaten the Turks is withering. Lawrence, however, is supposed to lead his forces against the Turkish garrison at Deraa (now Der'a, in southern Syria). Lawrence and Kharish enter Deraa incognito, presumably on a scouting mission, but a pair of Turkish soldiers seize Lawrence off the street, along with a small selection of other young men. Apparently, the Turkish commanding officer, Turkish Bey (José Ferrer), prefers raping young men to young women and, as luck would have it, Lawrence is the one he chooses. Lawrence is beaten into submission and the rest is mercifully left to our imaginations. This episode has a devastating effect on Lawrence's psyche. All he can think about is getting out of the desert and back to an ordinary life and job.

The film's final segment begins back in Cairo, where Lawrence learns that the allied powers are already discussing how to divvy up the Arabian Peninsula once the war is over. In the meantime, however, they'll need to break the backs of the Turkish forces by taking Damascus (now the capital of Syria). It's the "big push" and General Allenby (Jack Hawkins) wants Lawrence to lead Arab forces against the city from the east while the conventional British forces approach from the west. Lawrence decides to oblige, seeing a double opportunity. He'll help defeat the Turks but will also ensure that the Arabs take the city first, so they can declare a new Arab nation.

While marching on Damascus, Lawrence's force encounters the bedraggled remnants of a Turkish column that has just finished massacring an Arab village. Kharish urges Lawrence to bypass the column and head straight for Damascus, but Lawrence is a changed man after his experience with being tortured. His former passion for mercy has been replaced by thirst for vengeance. He orders his troops to take no prisoners and the Turkish force is soon totally annihilated. Then, it's on to Damascus (October 3rd, 1918). When the British force arrives in the city, they find that Lawrence's force has already been there for a day-and-a-half. The Arabs playact at the business of setting up a government, but the effort quickly collapses from a combination of old tribal rivalries and lack of ability to repair the city's crucial pumps and generators. After a few days of urban squalor, the Arabs head home, leaving the British to tend the store. The wily Prince Feisel, however, does manage to barter himself into the package deal. He'll be King of an Arab government with British oversight. Lawrence, now promoted to Colonel, finally heads home.

Postscript: Feisel (often spelled "Faisal") would rule Syria and Iraq until his death in 1933. He has proclaimed King by a Syrian National Congress but, in 1920, the French entered Syria and deposed him. The next year, he was reinstated as King by British mandate. He became King of Iraq, as well, in 1923, by an act of the National Assembly of Iraq.

Themes: I can't say as there's any one momentous theme developed in this film. It's more a succession of transient themes. The most uplifting one is the idea that real friendship can form across cultural gaps for those who are open to respecting and understanding one another. It's heartwarming to see Lawrence's appreciation for the Arabs and rejection of the prejudice held by his fellow officers. On the other hand, we observe that governments and their representatives can never be trusted. The British and French are more than happy to exploit and abuse the Arabs and to rob them of their independence, even after the Arabs helped them rout the Turks. Then, I think there's also something to be learned, here, about Lawrence's interesting personal psychology and the terrible influence that torture can have on a person's mind and motivations. Lawrence began as a man thought exceptional in the quality of his mercy (risking his life to save a lost man when his Arab friends would have written the man off for dead) and ended up a man with an apparent taste for slaughter. There is nothing like the experience of torture to promote a lifelong fixation with revenge. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to find one or more of the Iraqi detainees that have been tortured by American prison guards becoming involved in a future terrorist attack.

Production Values: Like many epics, Lawrence of Arabia takes many liberties with actual facts. Strictly speaking, however, the film is an adaptation of T.E. Lawrence's own memoirs (The Seven Pillars of Wisdom) rather than a documentary. The wonderful new two-disc set from Columbia pictures provides the film in the full director's cut, finally revealing for viewers the story that Lean wanted to tell. That story takes 227 minutes to tell, but it's worth every minute of it. The script provides several strengths and a smaller number of weaknesses.

Although there's plenty of massively staged action scenes in this epic film, such scenes are keep relatively brief and to the point, leaving time for Lean to do what he does best, which is to maintain the gripping human drama. This is a large-scale film that nevertheless keeps its primary focus on human motivations, especially those of T.E. Lawrence. British playwright Robert Bolt wrote the script. The film's dialog is not one of its strong points, both because it's sometimes plodding and because it's sometimes just not very credible. Some of it actually made me cringe. The other issue in relation to the script is that Lawrence, as presented here, remains a largely enigmatic character. His motivations were apparently fluid and uncertain and his morality ambivalent. Bolt and Lean succeed in posing questions about the man and why he behaved as he did, but, when the film is over, viewers will still not have much insight into what made the man tick. Although one reviewer declares that Lawrence "was a hero in every sense of the word," I doubt such an appraisal would be shared by most Turks, especially in light of the massacre outside of Damascus. Lawrence is not the kind of man that I personally find inspirational.

Lawrence of Arabia is one of the most beautifully photographed films of all time. The cinematography is what most sets this film apart from a lot of other wannabe epics. Lean was a perfectionist and Freddie Young a talented cinematographer. The result was a magnificent combination of shimmering scenery, thrilling action scenes, and intimate close-ups of human interactions. I doubt that the desert has ever looked more stunning or appealing in real life, much less in other films. The scene in which Omar Sharif's character approaches from a great distance, barely visible on the horizon, is a classic. There're some transition tactics that combine beauty with clever symbolism. A shot of a lighted match, for example, gives way to our first glimpse of the searing desert sun. A motorcycle passing Lawrence's transport vehicle as he departs the Middle East near the film's conclusion, neatly frames the picture when combined with the opening motorcycle accident. There are shots of majestic dunes, camel riders silhouetted against the sky, sand funnels and sand storms, and desert mirages. Lawrence's ghostly white robes and the blacks ones of Kharish contrast beautifully with the arid backdrops. The film was shot at locations in Morocco and Jordan, rather than the Arabian Peninsula per se, but I don't suppose many viewers will be able to tell the difference between one desert and another. The newly restored DVD print presents the Super Panavision-70 Technicolor photography as it was meant to be seen, though this is clearly a film that will always look better in a good theater than at home.

Many of the themes from the soundtrack of Lawrence of Arabia will already be familiar even to viewers finding their way to this film for the first time. The soundtrack earned one of the seven Oscars that the film received. The London Philharmonic, under Sir Adrian Boult, performed Maurice Jarre's grand musical score.

Peter O'Toole was relatively unknown when he was chosen to play the part of Lawrence. He wasn't Lean's first or second choice, but when Marlon Brando and then Albert Finney turned the role down, O'Toole, found himself with a career-making role of a lifetime, despite prior experience only as a Shakespearean stage performer. He made the most of the opportunity, effectively capturing all of the psychological turmoil and ambiguity of the character. It's a great performance, though I personally find O'Toole's reliance on facial twitches, as an acting device, a bit excessive. O'Toole went on to a great career that included performances in Becket (1964), Lord Jim (1965), What's New, Pussycat? (1965), Casino Royale (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), The Ruling Class (1972), Caligula (1979), and The Last Emperor (1987).

Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, in his debut film performance, was absolutely terrific as Kharish. He and Lean formed a strong working relationship that later benefited both in Doctor Zhivago (1965). Sharif also appeared in Funny Girl (1968), Juggernaut (1974), Top Secret (1984), and Hidalgo (2004). With newcomers in the two lead roles, Lean felt the need for some established box-office draws in the important supporting parts, and found them in the form of Alec Guinness (The Bridge on the River Kwai), Anthony Quinn (La Strada), Jack Hawkins (Zulu), José Ferrer (The Caine Mutiny), Claude Rains (Casablanca), and Anthony Quayle (The Guns of Navarone). All provided excellent work.

Bottom-Line: This is truly a man's film. In fact, there's not one speaking part for an actress. No significant females as love interest or in any other capacity. Despite thereby defying one of the sacred Hollywood conventions, the film nevertheless ended up with Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction/Set Direction, Best Sound, Best Music Score, and Best Film Editing. It lost out for screenwriting (deservedly). Neither of the rookie stars (O'Toole and Sharif) won trophies, despite each being nominated. I'd rate Lawrence of Arabia as one of the greatest epics of all times. Its strengths lie in the very qualities that make a film an epic. I'd certainly also rate it as one of the hundred greatest films of all time and, possibly in the top fifty. I don't rate in higher than that only because its few weaknesses are in categories that are important to me as a viewer: credible dialog and at least one admirable major character. I also prefer character elucidation to an enigma. Those are just my personal issues, however. This is one of the great works of cinema by any standard.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older