Lawrence of Arabia

In celebration of the film’s 55^th anniversary, I will be looking at one of my all time favorite films, “Lawrence of Arabia,” released in 1962. What a bold, crazy work of genius it was to make this film or even think that it could be made. In the words 55 years later of one of its stars, Omar Shairf: “If you are the main 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 desire to make this movie was based, above all, on imagination. Roger Ebert said in his review, “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 what he was working on had the potential of being successful.

Ebert said, “There is a moment in the film when the hero, a British eccentric named 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 part builds up to the part where the sparkling heat of the desert unwillingly surrenders the spot that becomes a man – a shot that is held for a long time before we can begin to see the tiny shadow. On television, this shot doesn’t work at all – nothing can be seen. Ebert noted, “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 part, the filmmakers were able to see why the movie would work. “Lawrence of Arabia” is not a basic biography or an adventure movie – although it includes both aspects – but a movie that uses the desert as a part for the splendor of a determined, unusual man. Ebert said, “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 and identify with the wildness of the Arabs.”

T.E. Lawrence must be the weirdest hero to actually be the focus of a movie. To play him, Lean casted one of the weirdest actors in recent movie history, the late Peter O’Toole, an awkward, almost clumsy man with a sculptured face and a speaking way that hesitates between entertainment and disrespect. O’Toole’s work was a serious one.

Ebert noted, “Although it was widely believed that Lawrence was a homosexual, a multimillion-dollar epic filmed in 1962 could not possibly be frank about that.” However, Lean and his writer, Robert Bolt, didn’t simply dove in and rewrite Lawrence into a basic action hero.

Using O’Toole’s strange speech and manner as their tool, they made a character who combined charisma and insanity, who was so different from straight military heroes that he could inspire the Arabs to follow him in that crazy march across the desert. There is a part in the movie when O’Toole, dressed in the loose white robes of a desert sheik, does a victory dance on top of a captured Turkish train and almost looks like he’s posing for fashion photos. Ebert said, “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 Lawrence takes under his protection.”

Ebert continued, “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. However, he did it partly with mirrors, the movie suggests. One of the main characters is an American journalist, played by Arthur Kennedy, obviously inspired by Lowell Thomas, who single-handedly traded 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 that part. Ebert said, “And only role-playing would have done the job; an ordinary military hero would have been too small-scale for this canvas.”

For a movie that runs 216 minutes, plus intermission, “Lawrence of Arabia” is not crowded with plot details. Ebert said, “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.”

Lawrence is able to bring together different desert classes, the movie argues, because (1) he is obviously a foreigner that he cannot even understand, let alone take sides with, the various ancient challenges, and (2) because he is able to show the Arabs that it is in their own selfishness to join the war against the Turks. Along the way he makes friends with certain desert leaders as Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness) and Auda Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn), both by winning their respect and by engaging to their logic. Ebert noted, “The dialogue in these scenes is not complex, and sometimes Bolt makes it so spare it sounds like poetry.”

Ebert continued, “I've noticed that when people remember "Lawrence of Arabia," they don't talk about the plot.” They get a certain look in their vision, as if they are remembering the whole experience and have never really been able to say in anyway. Ebert said, “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" or Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky."” It is sight and experience, and its ideas are about things you can see or feel, not things you can say. Much of its likeness is based on the fact that it does not have a complex story with a lot of dialogue. We remember the quiet, empty routes, the sun rising across the desert, the difficult lines drawn by the wind in the sand.

Although it won the Academy Award as the year’s best picture in 1962, “Lawrence of Arabia” would have been a lost memory if it had not been for the two film restorers, Robert A. Harris and Jim Painten. Ebert noted, “They discovered the original negative in Columbia's vaults inside crushed and rusting film cans, and they also discovered about 35 minutes of footage that had been trimmed by distributors from Lean's final cut.” To see it in a movie theater is to appreciate the detail of F.A. Young’s desert cinematography – accomplished despite unbearable heat and the blowing sand, which worked its way into every camera. “Lawrence of Arabia” was one of the last films to be photographed in 70mm (as opposed to being expanded up to 70 from a 35mm negative). It is a great experience to see it today as Lean wanted it in 1962 – and also an awesome one, to see how the motion picture company is losing the vision to make epic films like this and staying for safe narrative formulas instead.

I would stop here, but people probably didn’t know that they made a “made-for-television” sequel in 1992, “A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia.” T.E. Lawrence, one of the century’s most vague heroes, is taken down the performance path once again.

The subtitle on-purpose repeats the acclaimed David Lean film that, much to the grief of T.E. experts, had Peter O’Toole playing a rather showy, almost sword-wielding Lawrence, pretentiously given to deep thoughts. Picking up where that film ended, “A Dangerous Man” is more genuine and, making things undeniably difficult for non-experts, almost as difficult as the man himself.

The first scene, set in London in Royal Albert Hall in 1919, sees the American journalist Lowell Thomas, played by Adam Henderson, gripping his expensive audience with his touring lecture, shown with silent film, “With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia.” Lawrence himself, played with memorable detail by Ralph Fiennes, floats in shadows, simultaneously delighted with and shocked by the public worship. John J. O’Connor said in his review, “The ambivalence of his nature, of his very soul, is established in a stroke.”

The scene flashbacks a year, to the resolution that ended World War I, a situation that saw Lawrence join with the Emir Faisal, played by Siddig el Fadil, prince of the Hashemites, to extract Damascus from the Turks. Lawrence now goes out to get for the Arabs the independence and self-determination actually promised earlier by the British Government. He wants Faisal to be King of Syria.

Now that the War is over, the winners slip back easily enough to their own selfishness. The British want control of the Persian Gulf. The French insist on having Syria. O’Connor said, “At the heart of the power plays, of course, then as now, is the region's abundant oil supply.” The new fights against the world leaders will be seen at the Paris Peace Conference. O’Connor said, “Proffering Lawrence as a visionary, however personally confused, "A Dangerous Man" is a pointed what-might-have-been exercise.”

Obviously, the more you know about the time and the problems, the more you will appreciate this delightfully good film. Partially prepared or, at the very least, seriously close attention will be really rewarded. With David Puttnam, former boss of Columbia Pictures, and Brenda Reid as executive producers, the production is really amazing in its rich detail.

O’Connor said, “Tim Rose Price's screenplay, which evolved from a Clive Irving story, skillfully meshes world events with Lawrence's private world.” The direction by Christopher Menaul extracts any number of great performances, not least among the assumed bad guys: Bernard Lloyd as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Arnold Diamond as French Premier Georges Clemenceau, Denis Quilley as Lord Curzon and Nicholas Jones as Lord Dyson, a really nasty guy with pompous attitude.

O’Connor said, “But the core tension of the film is maintained by the always mysterious Lawrence, at times shy and reserved, then commanding, usually shrewd, a touch slippery and undeniably brilliant. Even as he senses that he is failing the Arab cause, he finds a perverse satisfaction in his celebrity. The long-debated question of his sexual orientation is not definitively settled, but the assumption here is that he was either homosexual or asexual (there is a passing hint of his established taste for flagellation). In one scene, he explicitly rejects a woman's advances, explaining that "I cannot respond to you, madam, as you wish."”

Lawrence’s most complete relationship is with Faisal, who he treats with something coming complete love. O’Connor said, “If not explicitly sexual, the situation between the two -- in 1918, Lawrence was 30, the Emir 33 -- is depicted as being extraordinarily sensual.” Both Fiennes and el Fadil, who was born in Sudan, are amazing, riding a flood of constant changing emotions, often without saying a word.

Lawrence’s story has proved firm. O’Connor noted, “In this country there is even a Lawrence monthly newsletter called "T. E. Notes," started in 1990 and published in Honesdale, Pa. The aficionados are evidently insatiable.” A good part of the reason can be noticed in “A Dangerous Man.”

I highly recommend everyone go out and see these two movies. “Lawrence of Arabia” can be found with no problem, but “A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia” might be difficult to find. My advice is to look it up and see where you can find it, but I definitely say don’t skip the chance to see these movies. I give them a high recommendation.

Stay tuned Monday for the continuation of “Studio Ghibli Month.”