Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Written by Robert Bolt & Michael Wilson

Directed by David Lean

The entertainment world is no stranger to dramatic shifts. The mere idea of a MOVING picture itself was incredible. New ways of telling stories exploded seemingly overnight. But the shifts didn’t just stop there. The 1920’s brought sound, the 1930’s brought color (although this was much slower). Films became more nuanced, tackling more serious subject matter. They became more respected. Broadway stars left the stage and headed west, leaping onto the silver screen. Within just a few decades, film became the dominant entertainment medium for the world at large.

And then, another seismic shift. But, for once, the industry was not threatened from within. This time, the challenger was external, an encroacher on the throne film had held for years.

Throughout the 1950’s, television became a dominant medium to distribute entertainment. After all, why leave your house to go see a film when you could stay at home and see something there? Within a few years, film and television were in a desperate battle for the attention of the public.

Lawrence of Arabia at one of its roadshow engagements

Enter: The Roadshow. A filmgoing experience akin to a night at the theater. No trailers, no newsreels, just an elegant experience, with a ticket price to match. A typical roadshow feature featured an overture, an intermission, and exit music, and was presented like a theater performance, complete with a main curtain and usually a souvenir program. Now, roadshows had existed before this time, and could most closely be compared to a film now receiving a limited-release before a later wide-release. However, they had generally fallen out of favor. Until, the rise of television. Now, going to a roadshow was a “classier” entertainment than watching a television. The film industry knew it needed bigger and bolder features to entice audiences to leave their homes and spend extra money to see these films in this elegant setting, a few weeks before they could go to their average cinema and see it there for cheaper.

Which brings us to 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia, the longest film (so far) to win Best Picture. Arabia is an excellent example of the typical roadshow feature: it’s long, it’s epic, it’s prestigious, it’s long.

Did I mention that this film was long? Because it’s LONG.

I’ve said before that I have no problem with long films. I still don’t, but this film is agonizingly long. It actually won an Academy Award for Best Film Editing, which is confusing, because I don’t think it was edited at all. It’s A LOT of sand dunes, A LOT of camels, and A LOT of Peter O’Toole’s blue eyes.

Peter O’Toole in the title role

There’s a standard filmmaking rule: Show, Don’t Tell. You can see this from a basic point of view: don’t tell me about an event that happened, show me the event. Can you imagine Titanic if the whole film was just Old Rose telling her story? We’d all be bored to tears (THIS IS NOT A PLACE TO TRASH TITANIC IT IS MY SECOND FAVORITE FILM OF ALL TIME AND I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL I REACH IT ON THIS LIST TO GIVE IT THE REVIEW IT DESERVES ANYWAY BACK TO LAWRENCE OF ARABIA). This film DOES show us events. But mostly, it shows us...wide shots of the landscape. Or wide shots of people traveling through the landscape. And, it shows us scenes of people standing (or sitting) around and discussing the plot. Director David Lean (who also directed 1958’s The Bridge on the River Kwai) shows us all the wrong things, and spends too much time telling us things in the most unexciting ways. There are times the plot needs to be discussed, that’s always true, but long (LONG) scenes of characters sitting around begins to feel draining, especially if there’s nothing exciting going on in the scene (I think about the Council of Elrond scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: it’s a bunch of people literally sitting and discussing the plot, but there’s character development, there’s tensions, there’s drama. Arabia...just has people sitting around and chatting). Add on top of this that the plot doesn’t seem to be fully explained anyway...there are many things that occur that aren’t explained in depth; it’s just assumed that the audience will go along with it. Why is Lawrence chosen for this mission anyway? Because he knows the area and the cultures? How do we know that? What is the context for these decisions?

Alec Guiness is MOST DEFINITELY not Middle Eastern

The performances in the film are acceptable...there’s nothing particularly memorable about anyone, or nothing terrible, either. O’Toole does an okay job, although he does A LOT of dramatic staring, sometimes accompanied by a bizarre facial expression. Also, it’s interesting that there’s a slight touch on Middle Eastern racism (both from white men and from other Middle Eastern cultures), but the irony must be lost on the filmmakers, who cast white actors for some of the Middle Eastern roles (I’m looking DIRECTLY at you, Alec Guinness).

It’s strange that this film is considered by many filmmakers to be influential to them (as Jahan said, an influencer of influencers), yet I struggled to keep my focus on the film. Like many of the other epic-style films on this list, sometimes less is more, and some major trimming of the film could’ve done wonders for my enjoyment. Beautiful visuals don’t make up for the meandering, confusing plot. The film looks great, but fails to entertain.

FINAL GRADE: C-