Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

This is obviously an epic film, lasting nearly four hours with the wide, sweeping desert vistas and huge cast. It describes a fairly brief period of time out of a remarkable man’s life. I wonder how modern viewers handle the length of the movie, accustomed as they are to movies this lengthy featuring superheroes with humor and almost constant action. I don’t even remember how long ago I originally watched Lawrence of Arabia —quite possibly forty or more years ago. It has aged pretty well overall. The only negative thing that struck me when I recently re-watched it may well be due to my age. But it can be a talkative film at times, which is fine, but they sometimes talk fairly softly, and if such a scene transitions to music, I found the music to be so loud in comparison that it lifted me half of my chair. I had to have remote in hand to be ready to adjust the volume. A minor thing.

227 minutes of greatness! I've always wanted to watch 'Lawrence of Arabia' given its standing as being one of the greats, though that rather long run time always put it on my subconscious back-burner. At last, I rooted out some time for it and man it was a well spent near four hours! I'm not going to say its length is ignorable, though it truly doesn't feel like a 3hr 47min movie - so every credit to all involved. Peter O'Toole's performance is undoubtedly outstanding, I can't really add anything more to what I'm sure many, many others have noted down the decades - he is, put simply, brilliant. Other strong performers are Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif and, albeit more minorly, Claude Rains. No-one on the cast puts a foot wrong, as expected. The cinematography throughout is also absolutely exquisite, the entire look and feel of the film is just stunning. There is much more to say about this but I'll leave that to those that have already said such things. I'm just here to watch great movies and this 1962 picture is unequivocally one of those. Quite evidently a classic, no doubt about it.

This has got to be in my top ten movies - it is an almost flawless exercise in marrying fantastic photography, casting, writing, costumes and a score into three hours of wonderful entertainment. Rumour has it that Albert Finney was offered the lead role and suggested Peter O'Toole instead. If that is true (or not) then clearly serendipity was already on hand to guide this rendition of the story of TE Lawrence, who inspired and led an Arab uprising against the Ottoman empire. The iconic scene that introduces us to Omar Sharif as Lawrence heads to meet Prince Faisal (Alec Guinness) starts us on a journey mixing adventure, politics, superstition, ambition and cruelty. Anthony Quinn is superb as are, in lesser capacities, Claude Rains, José Ferrer and Jack Hawkins as his somewhat cynical, but opportunistic GOC. Arthur Kennedy helps take Lawrence's story to the world and through his eyes we see how his character is changed by all the violence around/instigated by him. Peter O'Toole conveys the emotional rollercoaster of a journey from naive, optimistic officer to war-weary veteran in a dazzling fashion. This is a true treat of a film.