My main criticisms are that it’s meandering, and I don’t mean “long”; at 3.5 hours it would be hard to hold an audience’s attention even if the material were scintillating, but I found LoA to be… anything but. Too many slow conversations, wandering in the desert, and such.
And the “Mickey Rooney” award for racist casting was Alec Guiness as Prince Feisal. I know, I know, this was a common practice back in the 50’s and 60’s, but watching it in 2008 I couldn’t help but be mildly offended by it.
IMHO, they should have hired David Lean to direct **Dune **instead of David Lynch.
This is one of my all-time favorite films.
I saw the restored version (the one with an extra 20 minutes, and re-looped dialog) at the sorely missed Cine Capri, the last of the true Cinemascope theaters in Arizona. Even at nearly 4 hours, I didn’t want it to end - I thought it was beautifully filmed, immersive, and completely engaging.
It’s playing this coming Sunday at a theater in suburban Philly. I’ve never seen it on the big screen and I’m very much looking forward to it.
The second billing went to an Arabic actor (with an obviously arabic name), so I don’t think having Faisel played by Guinness was racially motivated. Alot of Lean’s films from that time period have Guinness in them, so I suspect he just wanted a role for in in Lawrence as well.
I’ve read that the Arab extras found the likeness very striking, actually. I mean, sure, it’s racist casting, but it isn’t ludicrous at least.
Definitely; it’s not nearly as offensive as Rooney who played a caricature of another race. I just find the entire practice of casting people as different ethnicities to be offensive in hindsight. I recall Robert Blake being cast as a Mexican boy on more than one occasion because he looked vaguely hispanic.
Granted if you throw that headress and goatee on anyone of vaguely the same physical characteristics you can probably get a pretty good Prince Faisel out of them.
Why? I mean, some casting is racially motivated, in which case I agree it’s offensive (David Caradine as a Chinese Monk, for example, was supposedly done because audiences at the time wouldn’t accept a Chines leading man). But if you have an actor whose good in a part and its not distractingly obvious that they’re the wrong ethnicity and they’re honestly chosen because they’re the best person for the role, I don’t think its particularly problematic.
After all, for at least some ethnicities your drawing on a pretty limited pool. How many arabic leading men were there running around the UK 1962 that weren’t Omar Sharif?
You do realise that Arabs are technically the same race as Alec Guiness.
I really have nothing to add to the great OP other than to note that I so fondly remember it for the cinematography that I kind of forgot how great the acting is.
I was also surprised at how the movie didn’t really shy away from his homosexuality. I wonder if there was any outcry at the time from the right?
Great flick. I saw it first in the UK in a full, proper sized screen during the 80s restoration. Saw it the second time in LA.
Maybe the issue was more that it was a recognizable actor. “Hey, it’s Alec Guinness! Playing… an arab prince!!!” If they had used a no-name actor it would have been much less distracting.
Again, I’m not saying I blame them for doing it, but it lessens my enjoyment of the movie, especially when I think he’s going to pull out a lightsaber.
??? And that’s exactly what you get – right up to the point where Lawrence orders the attack on the retreating Turkish convoy, and even then the audience is tempted to sympathize with him.
Except for the parts where he’s depicted as vain, judgmental, arrogant, foolhardy, and obssessive–you know: most of the movie the rest of us saw.
O’Toole fell into a rut over the years of mainly playing Eccentric Charming Englishman #4 for everything where the director would let him, but when he’s not slumming he’s an absolutely brilliant actor and this was his first leading role, so pretty much anything he brought to the character was probably intentional and more Lawrence than O’Toole.
I think somebody with the video equipment should do a series of shorts for YouTube that give you not a college course in but bite sized historical background for some movies. While it can still be a great movie, I wish I’d known a bit more about the history of Arabia and who these people were when I first saw it as a teenager (when I assumed Alec Guinness’s character was the first king of Arabia and thus a member of the Sa’ud dynasty for example- he was in fact King of Iraq) or a bit more about the British Empire and Ottoman Empire’s involvement in the Arab peninsula. (I’d also do one for The Lion in Winter [explain why the king of England is in France, for example] and Man for All Seasons and others- basically a “the least you need to know” thing.)
That said it speaks great of the movie that in spite of most people’s ignorance or relative ignorance of Arab history (my own included, especially on first viewing) you still know this is a great picture. And that scene of Omar Sharif’s character coming out of the mirage should be up there with Scarlett’s As God is my witness silhouette and Don Corleone saying “Make him an offer he can’t refuse”.
Re: the casting of Guinness-
King Faisal I of Iraq
Alec Guinness as King Faisal
There’s a very strong natural resemblance made even moreso by makeup. I don’t see anything racist about it, certainly no more than Irish-Mexican Anthony Quinn playing a Bedouin (or later a Greek) or Puerto Rican Jose Ferrer playing a Turk or Omar Sharif playing a Russian, also for Lean. David Lean wanted great actors in his movies, and he always wanted Alec Guinness; he’d have probably cast him as a camel if there’d been no other roles and Guinness probably would have worn a hump and been believable.
Guinness was one of the legendary chameleon actors who became Hitler, Fagin the Jew (also for David Lean), the smarmy over-the-top criminal genius in his own mind in The Lady Killers, Cyrano de Bergerac, Godbole in Passage to India and of course Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars movies; he was used to putting on makeup and reducing or enlarging facial features for his roles so this was just another, but he brought all of his characters whether in farce or drama a believability and humanity.
I’m trying to remember if you ever seen any women in the movie other than the funeral scene at the beginning. Are there any in the Egyptian hotel scenes?
The real Lawrence was not such a photogenic character-he was short and far from handsome. he also fictionalized much of his activities-the rape by the Turkish general was probably an invention.
But the movies is great-superbly photographed and directed.
And a First in Western Cinema: in the “I am a river to my people” scene where Anthony Quinn hosts Lawrence and the Harith in his tent, as the servants take away the giant platter of leftovers, Quinn lolls and passes postprandial flatus; 12 years before Blazing Saddles, but 3 years after the Japanese comedy Good Morning, which had a running gag of the dad farting and the mom trotting into his den asking “did you call me?”
Great movie (and one proof of that is that it’s so big that even Claude Rains didn’t steal it), but bad history: (boring Root Causes of World War One, blah, blah, blah: the German goal of circumventing British sea power by building railroads into Central Asia, blah, blah, blah). The Turks had the Germans also build a railroad to Mecca. Much as the US interstate put motel, gas station and diner owners along old Route 66 out of business, this railroad carrying pilgrims put the hurt on a lot of Arabs who’d been fleecing them for centuries. These Arabs were ripe recruits to draw Turkish troops away from the main battlefields.
What the movie doesn’t show is all the women and children on the trains being blown up by Lawrence. Unlike the victims of the Lusitania, these people weren’t collateral damage on the same conveyance as arms shipments: they were the main targets.
But dumb war movies don’t inspire viewers to learn more in depth. I’m sure the Coast Watchers were amazing, but Father Goose hasn’t led me to read one book about them. Something about Lawrence of Arabia makes you want to know what was behind the adventure.
The only cinematic criticism I can level is the score by Maurice Jarre. So much of it is just so…French. Arabic music filtered through Saint-Saëns, martial music via Gounod, etc.
Brilliant. :D:D:D
I believe it was Noel Coward who said “He’s so pretty they should have called it Florence of Arabia.” Or something like that – I’m quoting from memory.
