Lawrence of Arabia

The winner of the 1962 Oscar for Best Picture was Lawrence of Arabia, David Lean's epic about T.E. Lawrence, a scholar-soldier who led the Arab fight against the Turks during World War I. It would have been difficult to imagine that Lean could have topped himself after The Bridge on the River Kwai, but he did. Lawrence of Arabia is a masterpiece, one of the great achievements in film history.

At almost four hours long, the film requires a commitment, but it is never boring. It has a tremendous visual sweep--the film is ideally seen on a big screen, a really big screen (fortunately I had a chance to see it at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York after its restoration). The panoramas and vistas of the Arabian desert are breathtaking, and the editing is both brilliant and witty--the cut that goes from Lawrence blowing out a match to the desert is rightly one of the most famous in history, but there's also a great one when a reporter is told that Lawrence is the man to attract Americans to war, and we cut immediately to a gleeful Lawrence pressing a plunger to blow up a train.

Where Lawrence of Arabia works best is that it is really a character study. Peter O'Toole plays Lawrence as something of an enigma. He is not the typical soldier, as he is unpunctual and given to irreverence. He is fascinated by the desert, and when assigned to find Prince Faisal by trekking across it he tells his government sponsor that it will be fun, almost as if telling the audience that the film will be fun, which it is.

But there's more to Lawrence through O'Toole's brilliant performance. After the success of taking the city of Aqaba by the miraculous crossing of a previously impossibly crossable desert, which occupies the first half of the film, Lawrence starts to believe his own press. He sees himself as something of a prophet, and that it is his destiny to lead the Arabs to freedom. After being winged by a German soldier after a train derailment, he tells a colleague that he can only be killed by a "golden" bullet.

But this megalomania does not sustain, particularly after rough treatment after being captured by the Turks. A Turkish bey, Jose Ferrer, does something terrible to him (we might construe that he was raped). Lawrence's sexuality has been speculated about for years, as he was possibly gay and possibly a sadomasochist (one of the famous lines in the film is when he tells a soldier that the trick to putting out a match with one's fingers is not minding the pain). He comes to realize that he can never be an Arab, and that he belongs in Britain.

The film is full of both wonderful action sequences and plenty of office talk, but fortunately the office talk is witty and well written by Robert Bolt. O'Toole, who was an unknown at the time, was chosen after Albert Finney and Marlon Brando turned Lean down (after seeing Brando attempt a British accent in Mutiny on the Bounty we can all be happy he did turn it down). O'Toole is ably supported by a who's who of British actors of the period, including Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quayle, and Claude Rains. Alec Guinness makes a sly Faisal, although today it seems slightly offensive that he should play an Arab. It's less objectionable that the racially-mixed Anthony Quinn would play the leader of a tribe of mercenaries. Fortunately Omar Sharif was asked to play Sharif Ali, at first an enemy of Lawrence's but then a trusted associate. Sharif, as well as O'Toole, were nominated for Oscars.

There are too many great scenes and lines to recall here, such as the scene when Sharif is introduced, a flickering mirage-like image on the horizon, to the shadow of Lawrence as he exults on top of a wrecked train. Lean always knows how to make the right shot, and uses extreme long shots effectively to suggest the majesty of the landscape. Or when the reporter, played by Arthur Kennedy, asks Lawrence why is drawn to the desert. "Because it's clean," it's the answer. But I think my favorite line is when Lawrence is excused of being a clown. "We can't all be lion tamers," he replies.