Lawrence of Arabia
This is, without doubt, not only one of the greatest films ever made, but also one of the most influential on my sense of self. (Oddly, though we agree on little, I believe this is also my estranged brother’s favourite film.) Yet, I was surprised to find that on this viewing, the first in at least a decade, it fell just a little short of the impression I had of it as one of my Top Ten Films. This isn’t some re-evaluation based on the dubious casting of a prosthetic nose or the darkening of the skin of a well-known actor to play an Arab. (More generally, there’s a kind of ‘essentialism’ in the presentation of the Bedouin, that our better-educated times will also find troubling.) Rather, there are certain flaws that tweaked the rating downwards just a tad, but enough to move it out of its previous august company.
The film is based on a true story, but it really takes a lot of liberties with the facts in order to present a superb character study of ‘T. E. Lawrence’. The real Lawrence remains an enigmatic man who has generated a lot of speculation about himself. The prologue of the film, which presents his death and some conversations after his memorial service, set out this theme quite clearly. (Not something I really took in during all those early viewings in my youth and onwards.) This gives plenty of scope for director David Lean and his scriptwriters to create a movie figure, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (Peter O’Toole), which bears some relation to its prototype, but may have seemed unfamiliar to those who knew him.
Nor does the film limit its invention to the eponymous protagonist. The tale of the Arab Revolt is also abridged to the point of misleading the audience. In order not to turn this review in to a nitpicking list of ‘errors’, I sum this inaccuracy up in one scene. I take the conversation between the American journalist Jackson Bentley (Arthur Kennedy) and Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), the leader of the revolt. Feisal says that Bentley’s reporting is intended to bring the United States into the war. But Aqaba fell on 6 July 1917, while the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. So, the ‘Arab Revolt’ here is just as much a made-up story as the Lawrence of the film is a made-up person. (On another matter, my memory of his last home, Clouds Hill, is rather different from the village cul-de-sac of the film.)
These things, however, did not affect my rating. My main disappointment is in the performance of O’Toole. He won several awards for his acting, but I found it slightly irritating. Lawrence is presented in the script as a man who considers himself ‘a special one’ for whom ‘nothing is written’. The film tracks his arc downwards, where his self-illusions are stripped away and we are left with a well-educated, well-meaning thug, who fails in his stated goal. There are some scenes where O’Toole does very well indeed. I particularly liked the interplay during the ‘no prisoners’ dialogue. The haunted look in the aftermath of the death in the Sinai is another good one. The execution at Aqaba, though, didn’t work for me, nor the many instances like ‘it is far from Damascus’, where his sudden transition to diplomacy is necessary to gain the support of Auda (Anthony Quinn) or whomever. It didn’t seem of a piece with the mannered insouciance that was on show in Cairo. (I suppose that could have been the intention, which would mean we can add ‘duplicitous’ to the charge sheet against this imaginary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.)
For me, the show is stolen by Omar Sharif, who rarely puts a foot wrong with his acting. (Claude Rains, too, but he has only a few scenes.) Whether he’s riding up to the Harith well or acting as Lawrence’s conscience, he catches the eye without actually having the best dialogue. It’s also stolen by Auda’s nose, apparently a piece of make-up that Quinn himself was very pleased with. (Incidentally, in his own memoir of the events, Lawrence does highlight Auda’s nose, so its prominence is thoroughly merited.) Quinn is the real movie star of this film, playing a character much like all those other characters he played in films made about this time, whether it’s Auda-Barabbas or Auda-Stavros. At this point, the Mexican-American Quinn was the Hollywood go-to for ‘ethnic roles’. (One wonders how he missed out on Charlton Heston’s place in TOUCH OF EVIL.) Probably this sort of casting is unwelcome today, but there were legitimate reasons to do it in the early 1960s on such a big-budget production. Also, a special shout-out to José Ferrer as the Turkish Bey in Deraa. With one line he catches everything that makes him the exact counterpart to Lawrence, except he doesn’t see himself as ‘a special one’. I shall return to Lean’s ability to convey so much in a single image or line very soon.
My other gripe is with the score. It’s good, but I think it’s overused, except in the rare (singular?) instance where it’s diegetic.
However, visually the film is a masterpiece. Lean is keen to emphasise the landscape of the desert, and he actually relies heavily on his actors to convey the unpleasantness of violence. Notably, when a Turk taking pot-shots at Lawrence is eliminated, Bentley pops his head out of a railway carriage to comment ‘Jiminy! I’ve never seen a man killed with a sword before.’ Thankfully, neither did we. This ability to package so much so laconically reaches its greatest height in a series of shots towards the end. We see a devastated village, obviously the setting for rape and murder, represented by a mid-distance shot of bodies. We see a retreating Turkish column, tired soldiery and their field kitchen. Suspended from the lower half of the field kitchen are a couple of steel ladles, clanging together as the horse-drawn vehicle accompanies the column. They resemble nothing other than testicles – the ugly sexuality of male power (previously on display in José Ferrer’s scene), and its consequences, captured in two or three shots, and yet everything is PG-rated. Genius. (And this in a film with no female uttering a single word. A total failure in Bechtel Test terms.)
The film is long, at nearly four hours, though does offer an intermission at the two-hour mark. It never drags, but it is theatrically ponderous in its dialogue (And why not? With such good actors) and lacks the explosive excitement of modern epics. (Most of the action is packed into the shorter, second half.) Simply on the basis of its influence, it is required viewing; but it also makes that claim on its own merits. In creating ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, the film strips away the artifice that our erstwhile hero sought to create about himself and in humbling him presents one of the finest character studies ever committed to film.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
The film is based on a true story, but it really takes a lot of liberties with the facts in order to present a superb character study of ‘T. E. Lawrence’. The real Lawrence remains an enigmatic man who has generated a lot of speculation about himself. The prologue of the film, which presents his death and some conversations after his memorial service, set out this theme quite clearly. (Not something I really took in during all those early viewings in my youth and onwards.) This gives plenty of scope for director David Lean and his scriptwriters to create a movie figure, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (Peter O’Toole), which bears some relation to its prototype, but may have seemed unfamiliar to those who knew him.
Nor does the film limit its invention to the eponymous protagonist. The tale of the Arab Revolt is also abridged to the point of misleading the audience. In order not to turn this review in to a nitpicking list of ‘errors’, I sum this inaccuracy up in one scene. I take the conversation between the American journalist Jackson Bentley (Arthur Kennedy) and Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), the leader of the revolt. Feisal says that Bentley’s reporting is intended to bring the United States into the war. But Aqaba fell on 6 July 1917, while the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. So, the ‘Arab Revolt’ here is just as much a made-up story as the Lawrence of the film is a made-up person. (On another matter, my memory of his last home, Clouds Hill, is rather different from the village cul-de-sac of the film.)
These things, however, did not affect my rating. My main disappointment is in the performance of O’Toole. He won several awards for his acting, but I found it slightly irritating. Lawrence is presented in the script as a man who considers himself ‘a special one’ for whom ‘nothing is written’. The film tracks his arc downwards, where his self-illusions are stripped away and we are left with a well-educated, well-meaning thug, who fails in his stated goal. There are some scenes where O’Toole does very well indeed. I particularly liked the interplay during the ‘no prisoners’ dialogue. The haunted look in the aftermath of the death in the Sinai is another good one. The execution at Aqaba, though, didn’t work for me, nor the many instances like ‘it is far from Damascus’, where his sudden transition to diplomacy is necessary to gain the support of Auda (Anthony Quinn) or whomever. It didn’t seem of a piece with the mannered insouciance that was on show in Cairo. (I suppose that could have been the intention, which would mean we can add ‘duplicitous’ to the charge sheet against this imaginary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.)
For me, the show is stolen by Omar Sharif, who rarely puts a foot wrong with his acting. (Claude Rains, too, but he has only a few scenes.) Whether he’s riding up to the Harith well or acting as Lawrence’s conscience, he catches the eye without actually having the best dialogue. It’s also stolen by Auda’s nose, apparently a piece of make-up that Quinn himself was very pleased with. (Incidentally, in his own memoir of the events, Lawrence does highlight Auda’s nose, so its prominence is thoroughly merited.) Quinn is the real movie star of this film, playing a character much like all those other characters he played in films made about this time, whether it’s Auda-Barabbas or Auda-Stavros. At this point, the Mexican-American Quinn was the Hollywood go-to for ‘ethnic roles’. (One wonders how he missed out on Charlton Heston’s place in TOUCH OF EVIL.) Probably this sort of casting is unwelcome today, but there were legitimate reasons to do it in the early 1960s on such a big-budget production. Also, a special shout-out to José Ferrer as the Turkish Bey in Deraa. With one line he catches everything that makes him the exact counterpart to Lawrence, except he doesn’t see himself as ‘a special one’. I shall return to Lean’s ability to convey so much in a single image or line very soon.
My other gripe is with the score. It’s good, but I think it’s overused, except in the rare (singular?) instance where it’s diegetic.
However, visually the film is a masterpiece. Lean is keen to emphasise the landscape of the desert, and he actually relies heavily on his actors to convey the unpleasantness of violence. Notably, when a Turk taking pot-shots at Lawrence is eliminated, Bentley pops his head out of a railway carriage to comment ‘Jiminy! I’ve never seen a man killed with a sword before.’ Thankfully, neither did we. This ability to package so much so laconically reaches its greatest height in a series of shots towards the end. We see a devastated village, obviously the setting for rape and murder, represented by a mid-distance shot of bodies. We see a retreating Turkish column, tired soldiery and their field kitchen. Suspended from the lower half of the field kitchen are a couple of steel ladles, clanging together as the horse-drawn vehicle accompanies the column. They resemble nothing other than testicles – the ugly sexuality of male power (previously on display in José Ferrer’s scene), and its consequences, captured in two or three shots, and yet everything is PG-rated. Genius. (And this in a film with no female uttering a single word. A total failure in Bechtel Test terms.)
The film is long, at nearly four hours, though does offer an intermission at the two-hour mark. It never drags, but it is theatrically ponderous in its dialogue (And why not? With such good actors) and lacks the explosive excitement of modern epics. (Most of the action is packed into the shorter, second half.) Simply on the basis of its influence, it is required viewing; but it also makes that claim on its own merits. In creating ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, the film strips away the artifice that our erstwhile hero sought to create about himself and in humbling him presents one of the finest character studies ever committed to film.
© 2026 Paul Brewer
Mini Review: This current score is a new score, based on the first re-watch in what might have been a decade. (The old score was 98, and was decided on the basis of 'oh, this is one of my favourite films – which it still is.) The full review gives some detail of my change of opinion.
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