Lawrence Of Arabia (15.)
Directed by Sir David Lean.
Starring Peter O’Toole, Omar Shariff, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Claude Rains and Anthony Quayle. 1962. 222 mins + interval.
2012 was a great year for British films – both The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Lawrence of Arabia were re-released. Fifty years on and Sir David Lean’s epic is just as, perhaps even more, remarkable as when it first came out.
What you remember about Lawrence is the visual spectacle, those striking desert vistas. What still catches you off guard, no matter how often you have seen it, is just how smart, bold and serious it is. Its historical accuracy is up for debate but as a piece of storytelling it is without contrivance or simplification. Remarkable as Peter O’ Toole is the title role, it is a beautifully written part, compelling and yet entirely ambiguous. We spend three and half hours with him and yet at the end he remains a total mystery. This should be in some way unfulfilling but actually the film’s faith in the audience to cope with an enigma, to not spoon-feed them an explanation is enormously gratifying.
Scale is everything in Lawrence – of ambition, of spectacle and of the stark majesty of the natural world compared to human ambitions. The film’s scale is not just a blunt instrument to wow audience; it is there to communicate just how great his achievements were. Complaints about the dated aspects of the film – Guinness blacking up, the way that everybody regardless of race speaks perfectly enunciated English – seem trifling. These days this scale of filmmaking is reserved to fantasies about good and evil.
This 50th anniversary release is a restoration of a restoration. In 1988 Spielberg and Scorsese were instrumental in getting it back to its original condition after it had been cut down for previous re-releases and for TV. Back then I got to see it at the Odeon Marble Arch which was then just one enormous screen. Now the Odeon Marble Arch is a chopped up multiplex, 5 screens tucked in on each other like it was the work of some slum landlord.
Even if you already love the film, Lawrence will still floor you. It is something we just don’t get any more and we don’t really have the facilities to exhibit properly. It is an unmissable film – though I don’t know where you can get to see it properly.
Directed by Sir David Lean.
Starring Peter O’Toole, Omar Shariff, Jack Hawkins, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Claude Rains and Anthony Quayle. 1962. 222 mins + interval.
2012 was a great year for British films – both The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Lawrence of Arabia were re-released. Fifty years on and Sir David Lean’s epic is just as, perhaps even more, remarkable as when it first came out.
What you remember about Lawrence is the visual spectacle, those striking desert vistas. What still catches you off guard, no matter how often you have seen it, is just how smart, bold and serious it is. Its historical accuracy is up for debate but as a piece of storytelling it is without contrivance or simplification. Remarkable as Peter O’ Toole is the title role, it is a beautifully written part, compelling and yet entirely ambiguous. We spend three and half hours with him and yet at the end he remains a total mystery. This should be in some way unfulfilling but actually the film’s faith in the audience to cope with an enigma, to not spoon-feed them an explanation is enormously gratifying.
Scale is everything in Lawrence – of ambition, of spectacle and of the stark majesty of the natural world compared to human ambitions. The film’s scale is not just a blunt instrument to wow audience; it is there to communicate just how great his achievements were. Complaints about the dated aspects of the film – Guinness blacking up, the way that everybody regardless of race speaks perfectly enunciated English – seem trifling. These days this scale of filmmaking is reserved to fantasies about good and evil.
This 50th anniversary release is a restoration of a restoration. In 1988 Spielberg and Scorsese were instrumental in getting it back to its original condition after it had been cut down for previous re-releases and for TV. Back then I got to see it at the Odeon Marble Arch which was then just one enormous screen. Now the Odeon Marble Arch is a chopped up multiplex, 5 screens tucked in on each other like it was the work of some slum landlord.
Even if you already love the film, Lawrence will still floor you. It is something we just don’t get any more and we don’t really have the facilities to exhibit properly. It is an unmissable film – though I don’t know where you can get to see it properly.
