So I just finished watching this movie for the first time (all 3 hours and 45 minutes of it) and I was really impressed. Not just by the sweeping landscapes and cinematography, and not even by the amazing acting.
What I’m most impressed by is the sophisticated portrayal of the main characters involved. Somehow, considering the release date (1962), I expected this to be a depiction of Lawrence as some perfectly, manly, brightly-shining white man who saves the barbarous Arabs from themselves. With maybe some noble-savage types thrown in. Instead, he is depicted as arrogant, effeminate, and at types borderline-insane, while Ali (I think that is the name of his buddy, the servant of Faisal) is basically the sane one the audience can relate to. And the British and Arabs are depicted as equally noble and savage, wise and stupid.
And of course, the cinematography is gorgeous. Cairo and the desert look equally stunning and exotic.
Peter O’Toole also does a great job depicting Lawrence in all his bizareness. Is O’Toole naturally that effete, or did he have to work on it?
A couple of points: I think the subtext of some level of homosexuality is intentional (although I was so young when it first came out, I didn’t at all understand that whole scene with Jose Ferrer). So the effeteness was part of the character.
Also, see his other early work, maybe specifically Lord Jim, the character of which seems to me similar in some ways to Lawrence, and then Becket, a very different character, or the Lion in Winter, only 6 years later than Lawrence, but again a very different character - aggressively masculine and kingly.
I think the answer is that he is (or was) a very good actor.
Roddy
I saw this in the theater when I was 11 years old, back in the days when they dropped the kids off at the local movie house for the day, during the summer. I was overwhelmed. I was transfixed. I fell violently in love with Peter O’Toole. I demanded to be taken back to see it again. (and yes, I most definitely knew what that scene with Jose Ferrer was all about).
Oh, I love this movie SO much. Everything about it is so grand, the music is so glorious, I could blather on for hours. It was MADE for a big screen. Not a cell phone or a twitter or a laptop. Lawrence of Arabia is a crown jewel.
My parents brought me to a revival when I was a kid and I fell asleep. Then I went to the Egyptian Theater for its restoration premiere and Peter O’Toole showed up. It has been a favorite film of mine ever since and is one of those flicks I put on two and three times a year.
I know how much Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is so beloved in America as to have made it a favorite for Academy voters that year (Gregory Peck won for his Finch character), but in retrospect, I think Peter O’Toole got robbed that Best Actor award.
Hands down, Lawrence is in my Top Five of all-time best movies ever made…
I would like to add that I saw it at The Castro Theater in San Francisco last year and the current prints that are out in circulation SUCK big giant rocks; snaps, scratches, and the colors are fading.
It was so bad I wrote a letter to both the theater and the distribution company.
If you liked the movie, hustle down to the local library and read TE Lawrence’s book, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” In it, he gives some background to the desert war - which was
so movingly depicted in the movie. Also, look for a biography of the man; his early life rather
tellingly explains, at least partly, the man pre- Lawrence of Arabia.
He was a man who marched to his own drummer, for sure. I think he was most frustrated
(he was a scholar as well as a soldier) when the British officers above him seemly could not comprehend his intuitive grasp of the way the Arabians thought.
A man of many facets who amply repays our study of him.
I’m a 40 y.o. American woman and it’s my number one favorite movie of all time. Unfortunately, I’ve only gotten to see it on a tv screen. I love it so much, I don’t have a copy and I only watch it occasionally so that it can still surprise me.
This is just so wrong! This movie was carefully restored in the late 80’s, just because the original prints were deteriorating. If they were showing it in a revival on a big screen, there is no excuse for using an old print. I’m glad you took the time to write letters of complaint.
Turner Classic Movies shows it every so often. It must be wonderful to watch it on a big screen souped up TV home theater thing.
LoA is my favourite film. O’Toole isn’t effeminate, it’s just part of the character that he’s playing. He’s still acting (he played the Pope in The Tudors, for instance).
The manager of the movie house responded (I never heard from the distribution company) who confirmed that the print they received is that 80s restoration version.
However, those prints are now 30 years old and is now considered an old print! Granted, it is the restored version, but there are few in circulation and being handed around from theater to theater on the revival circuit, those few prints are getting over-used and the expense to create a new print cost-prohibitive.
