There's a moment in the first act of David Lean's classic 'Lawrence of Arabia' that breathes of imagination and plain good filmmaking. British soldier, Lawrence, has led a group of fifty Arab men on a suicide trek across the desert. When they make it to their destination, a lone camel is found in the back of the group and they realize that one of the men passed out in the middle of the desert somewhere. Lawrence decides to go back for him, but the Arabs try to dissuade his heroics. God wanted him dead, they explain, it is written. Lawrence goes anyway. The following series of shots are filled with unyielding tension. Lean puts us in the vastness of the desert and makes us victim to the harshness of the sun, the anger of the wind, and the torture of the sands. A boy waits at the edge of the desert for their return. We see a speck in the distance, and in a long series of shots, that speck becomes a rippling black shape, and that shape grows and advances until it forms into two men riding a camel: Lawrence and the missing person. The boy rejoices, the music swells, and the audience breathes a sigh of relief and joy as an exhausted Lawrence claims, "Nothing is written." It is a magical movie moment where all the elements are just right.
There's a moment a bit later which is even better. Lawrence has successfully brought two Arab tribes together in alliance to defeat the Turkish army. They are at camp and a gun is fired. A man from one tribe has killed a man from the other. Arab law says he must now be executed. Lawrence knows that if the man is killed by the opposing tribe, the other will be offended and cut ties. He also knows that the offending tribe will not kill one of their own. So, Lawrence takes it upon himself to kill the murderer for the good of the alliance. He is given a gun and asks that they bring the man. He sees the man's face. It is the very same man who he had rescued in the desert. The man he nearly gave his life for to save he must now kill.
So, we have two elements that make this film amazing. Lean's visual scope and imagination, and his clear sense of dynamic drama. Both play out nearly perfectly through the entire picture. This is a film that has not aged. The only sign of age it shows is in the overly make-upped actors. But, beyond that, the film is a movie buff's wet dream. The cinematography, the score, the editing, the acting, the screenplay, the ideas, everything is executed with perfection.
One example that makes this special compared to any other epic war movie, is the casting of Peter O'Tool in the lead. I recently saw the 1950s film version of Ernest Hemingway's masterpiece 'A Farewell to Arms.' While the typical Hemingway hero is strong and masculine, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the casting of Rock Hudson as Tenente. It was too obvious. A dashing, white-toothed, charming soldier who has a way with the girls (Gary Cooper was a more sensible choice in the 1930s version). Luckily, Lean cast a lanky, pale, and overall feminine man for his war hero. It is said that T.E. Lawrence was a homosexual, and while the film doesn't explicitly say so, it drops hints every now and then (much like Hitchcock's 'Rope'). His dilemma with wanting to be an Arab while also having an uncontrollable undercurrent of sadism makes him all the more compelling.
But, what people remember most about 'Lawrence of Arabia,' is the grand visual scope and the immense score. It is a little bit reprehensible to only be able to watch the film on a television set. It was filmed on 70mm film print, one of the few films that actually was filmed on 70mm and not blown up to 70mm from 35mm. I can't comprehend the wonders of being taken in by the images in a theater. I imagine at its premiere people felt their seats drifting into the vastness of the Arabian deserts.
The movie is a war epic, it's also an adventure, and it's also a serious character study. The adventure aspects of the film are not handled traditionally. At one point in the movie, Lawrence and two young boys who he's taken in (hint hint) are walking through the desert, trying to make it to Cairo. One of the boys steps into quicksand and Lawrence must act quickly to save him. You might think this involves a lot of dialogue, such as, "Hold on," or "I'll save you," or "Grab this," or even the boy screaming, "Help me!" over and over. There is little to no dialogue, actually. You might think there's gripping music during the sequence. There is no music. You might think the editing is quick and the cuts are sharp. They are not. By making the scene deliberately slow and silent, David Lean forces the seriousness of the situation on the moviegoer and increases the tension.
Lean is one of the screen's great treasures. A director with a devotion to perfection. Probably not as daring as Kubrick, but daring enough. How many studios do you know today that would pay hundreds of millions of dollars to make a four hour movie with no women, no fast-cutting action scenes, no incredibly famous actors (Claude Rains and Alec Guiness weren't exactly Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart), and no love story? But Paramount did believe in one thing. David Lean's incomparable imagination and storytelling prowess. Thanks to the studio's bet on him, his legend lives on and will never be forgotten.
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