by David Lean
(UK/USA 1962 221m) DVD1/2
Nothing is written
p Sam Spiegel, David Lean d David Lean w Robert Bolt, Michael Wilson ph Frederick A.Young, Nicolas Roeg (2nd unit) ed Anne V.Coates m Maurice Jarre art John Box, John Stoll, Dario Simone cos Phyllis Dalton sound John Cox
Peter O’Toole (T.E.Lawrence), Omar Sharif (Sheriff Ali), Anthony Quinn (Auda Abu Tayi), Jack Hawkins (Gen.Allenby), Anthony Quayle (Col.Harry Brighton), Arthur Kennedy (Jackson Bentley), Alec Guinness (Prince Feisal), Claude Rains (Dryden), José Ferrer (Turkish Bey), Donald Wolfit (Gen.Murray), Michel Ray, Zia Mohyeddin, I.S.Johar, Clive Morton, Cyril Cusack, Howard Marion Crawford,
Lawrence of Arabia is a film so deified by the current Hollywood elite that it seems churlish to pick any holes in it. For sure it’s the greatest film of Lean’s epic phase, a film of incredible visual beauty, intelligently scripted, exceptionally acted and dipped in the sort of majesty few films even aspire to, let alone achieve. Yet though it may be worth his later efforts Doctor Zhivago, Ryan’s Daughter and A Passage to India put together, forgive me if I don’t yearn for his earlier, more linear and certainly leaner forties works. (As one quipping critic put it, inside every Lean picture, there is a fat one wanting to get out.)
Though following Lawrence’s career in detail from his Cairo beginnings to his final return home, the one main complaint one has is that Lean’s film never remotely gets to grip with Lawrence the man, being more interested in the vision of Lawrence the demi-god, worshipped by the Arabs and the embarrassment of his superiors. Yet though it may lack such insights into the eponymous characters afforded by Schaffner’s Patton or even Attenborough’s Gandhi, it’s a superior achievement to any of them. After all, how can any biopic justify a man’s life? The only person who can and perhaps should do that is the man himself. Lean’s film is happier to leave him as an enigma and let audiences come to their own conclusions. Lawrence was no saint, an egotist of almost frightening proportions who came to believe in his own invincibility. Like any modern celebrity, fame went to his head, but unlike many of the more shallow celebrities of the modern era, we see him dislike not only what he has become, but also what he is. At times, we get the feeling he believes his nationality is something to be ashamed of.
Lawrence could not have worked without an ace technical crew and the co-operation of many Levant governments. His film is full of epic sequences on a grand canvas, with desert reaching illimitably to a hazy horizon, clear blue skies and shots of the Via Lactia at night contrasting with the burning heat of the sands. Though he undoubtedly had time on his side, Freddie Young’s photography is awe-inspiring – you almost feel as if your throat is parched. There are sequences that stay with you for life; the attack on Aqaba, Lawrence returning into the officer’s mess with an Arab youth, Sharif’s immortal introduction on the horizon, that infamous cut from matchstick to sunrise. The sets, editing, costumes and score (easily Jarre’s best) are all perfect, too and the cast are beyond compare. Though O’Toole’s masterful performance was rightly praised, Sharif is excellent as Ali, Wolfit and Hawkins perfect as differing sides of the military, Guinness suitably chameleonesque as Faisal and Kennedy superb as Bentley, who perhaps understood Lawrence better than anyone.
More than anything, however, this film is a David Lean super production, a film only a director as fastidious as he could make. Steven Spielberg once said it was a miraculous film, and one recalls him saying how he enjoyed watching the restored film with Lean and how Lean gave him a running commentary throughout on how each shot was made. Quite right that he enjoyed it, but it does highlight the hypocrisy of his denying others his thoughts on his own films by not doing commentaries on his DVDs. As for Lawrence, leave the final words to Quayle – who superbly played probably the most normal character in the movie – who said “he was the most extraordinary man I’ve ever known.” One thing no-one who saw this film would argue with.
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Hi! Allan Fish,
What a very “frank” and very interesting review of David Lean’s 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.….
….Oh! yes, I do own this film, (and Doctor Zhivago) but I haven’t watched neither film yet…
…Btw, what a very beautiful screenshot from the
film Lawrence of Arabia
Thanks,
Deedee😉
Cont… starring actor Peter O’ Toole.
Allan Fish said, “….the one main complaint one has is that Lean’s film never remotely gets to grip with Lawrence the man, being more interested in the vision of Lawrence the demi-god, worshipped by the Arabs and the embarrassment of his superiors….”
I have linked a website below and “methinks” 😕 🙄
That author Robert Ryan, in his book Empire of Sand
Address Lawrence of Arabia, the man.
http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/features/2008/r_ryan/r_ryan.html
Deedee😉
That I know you so well, Deedee, means that your saying you have never seen Lawrence of Arabia does not merit a shock. Rather I am shocked when you say you have seen a film…unles it be in black and white and made prior to 1960.
Dee Dee, thanks much for that link!
Allan Fish said, “Rather I am shocked when you say you have seen a film…unless it be in black and white and made prior to 1960.
Ha! ha!…Allan, please don’t be in 😯 shock, but contrary to popular belief I have watch several films after 1960…but I’am just to “afraid” to talk about them…
…I’am just kidding around with you!
Sam Juliano, You’re very welcome!
Deedee😉
This is my favorite film of the sixties, also quite possibly my favorite film of all time. And aside from personal preferences, I believe it’s one of the greatest of all time as well.
Interestingly, the film took a lot of flack at the time – both Sarris and Kael agreed that it was not worth much (as I wrote about recently in the intro to my “To Kill a Mockingbird” piece). And I recall one of those aforementioned Czech professors (the ones who denied me the pleasure of The Cat Who Wore Sunglasses, those bastards!) utilizing clips from Lawrence as evidence of the mediocrity of the master shot or as he put it, upholding super wide views and extreme close-ups as the essence of cinema: “medium shot makes medium movie.” Needless to say, I quite disagree but it raises an interesting point – arriving at the particular moment in cinema history that it did, Lawrence of Arabia can – ironically – seem less adventurous than its peers, and I can actually see – in its vague contours – why some gifted critics mistook it for run-of-the-mill epic filmmaking.
Actually, I disagree with them and (perhaps) you that Lawrence remains elusive. Of course, his character is too immense for us to completely grasp, but I’ve never felt like I was the outside looking in. As you imply, whatever confusion we feel about his character is, I suspect, his own as well. He is a man who does not really know himself, and thus can fundamentally change his persona and therefore achieve great things seemingly beyond the grasp of most men (and yet, because of this, he’s always at risk of tumbling into the abyss and losing his identity altogether).
So many critics, even some of those who seem to admire the film, seem to miss the fact that far from having a cipher at its center as Kael put it, Lawrence is an epic unimaginable without its central character. It manages to be both vast beyond comprehension, and yet to be entirely moulded around one individual and – more importantly – his mind and spirit.
It’s all personal preference, MovieMan, but you must also bear in mind that Kael sharpened her knife for Lean, and was the critic who more than any other caused Lean to effectively retire after Ryan’s Daughter. I like Lawrence immensely, but Kael was right about one thing, his best films were made in the forties.
That I disagree with. I think Lawrence is far and away his best film (how could I not – if it’s among his best ever). I love economy and precision too, but Lawrence’s vastness allows it to go for something simply not achievable on a smaller level.
That said, following Lawrence, before Zhivago or Bridge or any of the others, I would certainly put his 40s work, at least that which I’ve seen: Brief Encounter and Great Expectations, and maybe Oliver Twist too. In theory I agree with you that his 40s work is sharper and generally better than his epics, with one major, aforementioned example.
Movie Man:
Lean himself on a recorded interview stated that GREAT EXPECTATIONS was the greatest film he ever made. I must say I have always felt that way myself, and have defended the position vigourously. But I must say that there have been times in my life when I broached the “LAWRENCE as his greatest” idea, only to back off. It’s certainly among his four greatest films (GE, BRIEF ENCOUNTER and OLIVER TWIST are the others three) but it’s harder to numerically list them. Allan’s favorite Lean I know is OLIVER TWIST.
Needless to say your arguments here are magnificent, as always befits a scholar and a gentleman.
On another note, I read Lean’s career in a very auteurist fashion, much like Fellini’s, that is to say my awareness of the whole strengthens my appreciation of each film and its place within a movement – in Fellini’s case from poignant, spiritualist innocence to worldly, bemused decadence (so that that girl waving across the stream to Marcello at the end of La Dolce Vita becomes a mirror image of Cabiria weeping, bruised but still somehow believing in the world) and in Lean’s case from a domestic yearning and dreaming to the experience of adventure in the world outside England’s borders. I find, in this regard, the key works of his career to be Brief Encounter and Lawrence of Arabia, one which begins with a dreamer yearning to break free from her melancholy comforts, the other of which ends with a dreamer having achieved his ambitions of adventure and recognition and experience beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, returning, tired, spent, and as confused as he started out, to his home, if one can call it that.
In this sense, perhaps the key sequence in all of Lean’s career is the moment Celia Johnson dreams of far-off places she will travel with her lover – it’s as if an impatient, restless Lean is projecting himself forward into the future of his work.
Sam, I love Great Expectations but I must admit it will always be a little hobbled in my mind by not quite “getting” Estella – the key to Dickens’ work, which is my favorite novel of all time (and thus, one of my favorite works of art, period). Yet it nails the atmosphere so perfectly I can’t even hold that crucial point too much against it.
Movie Man:
Your argument for that auturist “out of the borders” adventurous Lean is a sound one, methinks, and it can’t be refuted, except as always to say it’s a matter of taste. The literary adaptations are just as “valid” within the artistic pantheon, even if some like yourself understandable see then as tame, if magnificently crafted. Yeah, you have a point with Estella.
My own favorite novel of all time is Hugo’s LES MISERABLES, and my favorite Dickens (which would therefore rank among the greatest novels and works of art) is BLEAK HOUSE. But of course GREAT EXPECTATIONS would have to rank highly on any list, as it does on your own.
Oh, and yes, I agree with that most astute assertion of the scene there with Celia Johnson.
Agree with MovieMan on Estella in GE, which is why OT places ahead of it. V Hobson is not right. It needed Jean Simmons to carry on playing her right through. Joan Greenwood would have been good, but the hair wasn’t right. Margaret Lockwood perfect, but a few years earlier, not in 1946.
Geez, Margaret Lockwood would have really been the one, but I hear what you are saying.
Allan and Sam, what did you think of the 1998 adaptation, by Alfonso Cuaron? At the time he did not have the auteur cred he does now, and it was generally savaged, brushed off, or ignored by critics. But I found it an interesting riff on Dickens’ theme – I thought it got the intensity of Pip’s feelings for Estella, and the way this is so integrally bound up in his ambitions, more than Lean’s version.
To me, that film’s primary flaw was its dramatic structure. It squished the whole third act of the book into one scene at the end of the movie which completely destroyed its effectiveness (this didn’t bother me quite as much on second viewing, knowing what to expect, but it killed me in ’98 when I first saw the movie and had only just finished reading the book).
I haven’t seen it in a few years, but it I am planning on doing an adaptations series on Great Expectations after I do the Wind in the Willows, hopefully with clips from the various versions. (The early 30s Hollywood adaptation creates a fascinating contrast with Lean’s for how “wrong” it is; interestingly, the same actor plays Jagger in both: Francis L. Sullivan – for some reason I was thinking the name Francis X. Bushman, but he of course was a quite different actor – with a QUITE different body type…)
Hey Movie Man, I just got in from an excellent off-Broadway production of Thornton’s Wilder’s OUR TOWN, which I will have up for Monday. Great to see you here, and as always, much appreciated. Right now it’s 4:00 A.M. in the U.K., so Allan’s horizontal.
I have developed a taste for Cuaron’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS, although I still feel both Paltrow and Hawke are too light for the roles. The updating, the lyricism and Patrick Doyle’s excellent score make for a ravishing film both visually and sonically, and now even once is the 70’s setting any kind of a downer. I completely agree with you that the end third was hopelessly condensed, this is a serious flaw………oh yes, I knew “Mr. Bumble” played Jagger in both, that is quite a coincidence.
I look forward with excitement to your planned series of GE, and your continuation of WIND IN THE WILLOWS!!!!
Yes, Sam, me too. I planned to take April “off” and I sort of did though I put up a few posts. That is to say, what I wrote was very spur of the moment. I intend to keep up the slower pace as it makes more sense now, but also hope to get to many of the ideas I’ve had on the back burner for a while…mumblecore, a critique of Richard Corliss’ celebration of blockbusters, the Willows series, the Great 150, and even some semi-revisionist takes on Forrest Gump, Rain Man, and Field of Dreams. We’ll see, though now that I’ve “spoken them aloud” the ideas are probably cursed…
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