Lawrence Of Arabia [1962]
Lawrence Of Arabia [1962]
In 1962 Lawrence of Arabia scooped another seven Oscars for David Lean and crew after his previous epic, The Bridge on the River Kwai, had performed exactly the same feat a few years earlier. Supported in this Great War desert adventure by a superb cast including Alex Guinness, Jack Hawkins and Omar Sharif, Peter O’Toole gives a complex, star-making performance as the enigmatic TE Lawrence. The magnificent action and vast desert panoramas were captured in luminous 70mm by Cinematographer Freddie Young, here beginning a partnership with Lean that continued through Dr Zhivago (1965) and Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Yet what made the film truly outstanding was Robert (A Man For All Seasons) Bolt’s literate screenplay, marking the beginning of yet another ongoing collaboration with Lean. The final partnership established was between director and French composer Maurice Jarre, who won one of the Oscars and scored all Lean’s remaining films, up to and including A Passage to India in 1984. Fully restored in 1989, this complete version of Lean’s masterpiece remains one of cinema’s all-time classic visions. –Gary S Dalkin
On the DVD: This vast movie is spread leisurely across two discs, with Maurice Jarre’s overture standing in as intermission music for the first track of disc two. But the clarity of the anamorphic widescreen picture and Dolby 5.1 soundtrack justify the decision not to cram the whole thing onto one side of a disc. The movie has never looked nor sounded better than here: the desert landscapes are incredibly detailed, with the tiny nomadic figures in the far distance clearly visible on the small screen; the remastered soundtrack, too, is a joy. Thanks are due to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg who supervised (and financed) the restoration of the picture in 1989; on disc two Spielberg chats about why David Lean is his favourite director, and why Lawrence had such a profound influence on him both as a child and as a filmmaker (he regularly re-watches the movie before starting any new project). Other features include an excellent and exhaustive “making-of” documentary with contributions from surviving cast and crew (an avuncular Omar Sharif is particularly entertaining as he reminisces about meeting the hawk-like Lean for the first time), some contemporary featurettes designed to promote the movie and a DVD-ROM facility. The extra features are good–especially the documentary–but the breathtaking quality of both anamorphic picture and digital sound are what make this DVD package a triumph. –Mark Walker
Customer Review: fantastic timeless entertainment
Cant think of many (if any) movies that can make the desert a nice place to be, but the sunrise shots really caught my eye and certainly appealed to me. yes its an old film, of which I am actually glad they kept the intermission in the dvd release for the reason of listening to glorious piece of music that identifies the film instantly. This film certainly deserved the praise its received. timeless entertainment for the family.
Customer Review: A LONG EPIC THAT DESERVES TO BE SEEN BY EVERYBODY
David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia” is one of the few films that legitimately deserves to be called great… It appears on virtually all “ten best” lists and reveals deeper layers of meaning with repeated viewings…
Lean, a man devoted to the art, gives “Lawrence of Arabia” its spectacular values… He unifies the sand and the sun to flame out the silver screen… Maurice Jarre’s terrific music escorts the appearance and disappearance of the sun below the horizon in the sleepy desert…
“Lawrence of Arabia” is a prodigious labor, a masterful mixture of fact and artistry, a masterpiece of intimate moment and spectacular largesse, a film that literally excites the senses… In a visual sense, Lean combines a sure sense of place with an approach to the action that he borrows from an unlikely source–John Ford… Lean turns his vast desert canvas into another Monument Valley, and when his Bedouins ride across it, they are not far removed from Ford’s cavalry… In many of the early scenes, the stately gait of the camel’s walk gives the film a slower pace, and this is precisely what Lean is trying to achieve… Lean even manages to surpass Ford with his understanding of the relationship between his characters and the landscape; how the desert changes those who go into it…
The film is the story of a solitary adventurer who always knew he was different, but in Arabia he discovers that his proportions are heroic… Perhaps this is the secret of Lawrence of the legends — that at the bottom of all the violent action is a protagonist about whom one cares… A puzzling personality whom one glimpses but never fully understands… Throuhout the picture one has a sense of a man discovering his own unique dimensions…
Lawrence’s mission, largely his own creation, is to unite the feuding Bedouin tribes under the leadership of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), and to keep the British politicians, as personified by Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains), from putting the Arabs under their colonial thumb after World War I is over… It is accomplished through a semi-episodic series of battles and raids where Lawrence is sometimes accompanied by Ali (Omar Sharif) and Sheik Auda (Anthony Quinn), and equally difficult bureaucratic struggles he faces with Gen. Allenby (Jack Hawkins).
All the conventional elements of the genre are at peaks of excellence here: The stretch desert with its white golden sands; peril, anywhere and everywhere; danger-for Lawrence of Arabia is a film about guerrilla warfare; prowess-Lawrence crosses Sinai on foot; physical torture-Lawrence in the hands of the Turkish bey; impossible mission- Lawrence takes the seaport of Jordan from behind; ruthlessness-Lawrence shouting ‘take no prisoners’ leading his men to put to death a Turkish column…
Every component is here, everything one needs for a great adventure film, many spectacular sequences, each of them so perfect: Lean cuts to the sun again and again, turning it into a character; the scene in Feisal’s tent when Lawrence first talks with the king; Lawrence striding on top of a captured train, parading before rows of cheering Arabs; the scene between Lawrence and Ferrer illuminating Lawrence’s strange perversity, a mixture of masochism and repressed homosexuality; the scene when a Beduin prince appears on his camel, an exceedingly long take in which a strange figure is first resolved out of waves of heat and then, as he approaches, becomes a frightening threat to Lawrence’s escort at the desert well…
The photography, the script and the acting are so superb that “Lawrence of Arabia” becomes a lavish epic winner of 7 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Directing, Color, Cinematography, Sound, Muscial Score and Film Editing…
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