Lawrence of Ara­bia (1962)

In 1990, fol­low­ing the re-release of the new­ly restored 1962 cut of Lawrence of Ara­bia, the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute hon­oured David Lean with its Life­time Achieve­ment Award. The award itself was pre­sent­ed by Steven Spiel­berg who, in his pre­sen­ta­tion speech, spoke gen­er­ous­ly of the for­ma­tive influ­ence of Lean’s late-peri­od epics on his own film­mak­ing career, cit­ing Robert Bolt’s screen­play as ​‘the best ever written’.

Whether we share Spielberg’s sen­ti­ments or sim­ply choose to for­give a hyper­bol­ic attempt at reha­bil­i­tat­ing a major film­mak­ing tal­ent – one who has become more sus­cep­ti­ble than most to the undu­la­tions of crit­i­cal favour – it’s inter­est­ing to note that the sin­gle line of dia­logue upon which this mono­lith­ic pil­lar of cin­e­ma ulti­mate­ly hinges is attrib­ut­able to its direc­tor rather than Bolt.

It’s Lean him­self who, at the last minute, dubbed the part of the ser­vice­man call­ing out to Lawrence as he final­ly reach­es the Suez Canal fol­low­ing a near-fatal desert cross­ing. We see the bizarre jux­ta­po­si­tion of a ship seem­ing to cross the desert on the hori­zon, and hear a sol­dier repeat from afar, ​“Who are you?” It’s the defin­ing ques­tion in a film that paints an inti­mate por­trait of psy­cho­log­i­cal tragedy on one of the grand­est, most mag­nif­i­cent can­vass­es in the his­to­ry of cinema.

It’s a daz­zling work of art, from Fred­die Young’s cin­e­matog­ra­phy to John Box’s dress­ing of the mirage sequence, or Peter O’Toole danc­ing in the sun­light aboard the crashed train (shot by André De Toth and Nic Roeg’s sec­ond unit) as Mau­rice Jarre’s score swells. From Lean’s sin­gle-shot orches­tra­tion of the raid on Aqa­ba to the visu­al ono­matopoeia of cinema’s most breath­tak­ing ​‘match’ cut. But of all mir­a­cles read­i­ly appar­ent on screen, per­haps the great­est is that the film even got made in the first place.

TE Lawrence was vehe­ment­ly opposed to the idea of any­one adapt­ing his auto­bi­og­ra­phy ​‘Sev­en Pil­lars of Wis­dom’, for the screen, telling writer Robert Graves in 1935, ​“I loathe the notion of being cel­lu­loid­ed. My rare vis­its to cin­e­ma always deep­en in me a sense of their super­fi­cial fal­si­ty… ​‘Vul­gar­i­ty’, I would have said, only I like the vul­gar­i­ty that means com­mon man, and the bad­ness of films seems to me like an edit­ed and below-the-belt speciousness.”

Yet the leg­end of Lawrence of Ara­bia was one born out of cin­e­ma, an hero­ic enig­ma who grew in pub­lic con­scious­ness less from lit­er­ary auto­bi­og­ra­phy than from the trav­el­ling news­reel road­shows and the lec­tures of Low­ell Thomas, one of the few war cor­re­spon­dents with direct access to Lawrence. By the time Sam Spiegel acquired the rights from the estate trustees in 1959, the sto­ry of Lawrence of Ara­bia had already become the stuff of school­boy leg­end, cement­ed through var­i­ous stage and bio­graph­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions (Lean’s own Prince Feisal, Alec Guin­ness, had even played the title role in Ter­ence Rattigan’s Ross in the West End).

Many valiant but frus­trat­ed attempts were made by pre­vi­ous rights-hold­er Alexan­der Kor­da to bring Lawrence’s sto­ry to the screen through­out the ​’30s and ​’40s, but myr­i­ad fac­tors – from script dis­ap­proval to inter­na­tion­al rela­tions at the out­break of war – served to thwart them, leav­ing it to the pro­pa­gan­da machines of the Sovi­ets (the 1930 film Vis­i­tor from Mec­ca) and Dr Goebbels (Upris­ing in Dam­as­cus) to mount their own assaults on his lega­cy. Lean and Bolt sought to demythol­o­gise Lawrence, to dis­avow any Kipling-esque, cow­boys-and-indi­ans hero­ism for some­thing that aspired to Shake­speare­an tragedy, hap­py to play fast and loose with his­tor­i­cal verac­i­ty if it served their por­tray­al of a flawed, neu­rot­ic genius – a mod­ern cin­e­mat­ic Ham­let. Theirs is no hagiography.

If there’s one aspect that pre­vents Bolt’s out­stand­ing screen­play from quite reach­ing the dizzy­ing pedestal upon which Spiel­berg places it, it lies in its over­state­ment of Lawrence’s con­tra­dic­tions, the ​“no one ever knew him” asser­tion with which the film begins, build­ing towards the answer, ​“least of all Lawrence himself”.

O’Toole’s per­for­mance nev­er shies from Lawrence’s preen­ing nar­cis­sism and arro­gance, even bar­barism. Yet he effects a remark­able coun­ter­bal­ance both in his com­pas­sion and his emo­tion­al and strate­gic intel­li­gence. TE Lawrence him­self stip­u­lat­ed in an ear­ly con­tract that there should be no women in his screen sto­ry, and Lean oblig­es by keep­ing his alleged homo­sex­u­al­i­ty close to the sur­face. Lawrence’s well-doc­u­ment­ed masochis­tic ten­den­cies cer­tain­ly leave the Der­aa rape sequence open to per­for­ma­tive inter­pre­ta­tion. Who­ev­er TE Lawrence was, Lean’s film remains an inter­pre­ta­tion of unpar­al­leled ambi­tion, its 313-day shoot last­ing as long as the Arab Revolt itself.

This new 4K restora­tion of the 227-minute Director’s Cut glis­tens in a way Lawrence Of Ara­bia nev­er has before, a con­cur­rent Blu-ray release serv­ing to mock even the most expan­sive home cin­e­ma set-up. It’s a film made for the cin­e­ma; a film, in fact, for which cin­e­ma itself was made.