Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Arabian Whites

Tally ho, dear ILTBTA readers! It’s time for the next installment of “ILTBTA Epics: Summer of Sweat”, and we’re embarking on a nearly four-hour journey with Lawrence of Arabia. Following the exploits of British officer T. E. Lawrence during World War I, this intense tale covers a lightly fictionalized account of his time working to unite Arab tribes to fight for their freedom from the Turks… or is he?? Saddle up your camel, conserve your water, and chaaaaarge!

White Saviours (Source)

Previews

What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?

Ellen: Much like our last post, as far as I’m concerned, this is a song lyric, specifically from Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

Tyler: I know this movie is very long and stars Peter O’Toole and … oh Omar Sharif is in it too, which I know from years of crossword clues. Beyond that, no idea. I’m not even sure if this even takes place on the Arabian Peninsula.

Plots & Feelings

This one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): The story of T.E. Lawrence, the English officer who successfully united and led the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks.

Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):

• In 1935, T. E. Lawrence dies in a motorcycle accident. His memorial service is held at St Paul's Cathedral, and sentiments regarding the dead man are a mixed bag.

  • Tyler: It should be noted that the first four-and-a-half minutes are a black screen while the orchestra does its thing, which really lets you know off the bat what kind of movie this is: no fucks given about the runtime, this movie will.be.taking.its.tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime.

  • Ellen: There’s a reason one of the most Googled questions about this movie is “does Lawrence of Arabia start with a black screen?” lol. This type of intro very much gave play vibes, like when the curtains are still closed but we’re hearing the musical suite. This feeling was compounded by the exorbitant runtime and full-on intermission.

• During the First World War, Lawrence is a misfit British Army lieutenant, notable for his insolence and education. Over the objections of General Murray, Mr. Dryden of the Arab Bureau sends him to assess the prospects of Prince Faisal in his revolt against the Turks.

  • Ellen: I spent a good long while trying to determine who I think young Peter O’Toole looks like, and I eventually settled on a cross between Ralph Fiennes circa Quiz Show and the guy who plays Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter.

    

  • Tyler: Needs more eyeliner, but I see it!

A+ transition, probably won the editor her Oscar (Source)

• On the journey, his Bedouin guide, Tafas, is killed by Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish for drinking from his well without permission.

  • Ellen: Because of the flatness, you see Ali coming from a long way off, and the directorial choice to make the approach silent is a powerful tension-builder.

• Lawrence later meets Colonel Brighton, who orders him to keep quiet, make his assessment, and leave.¹ Lawrence ignores Brighton's orders when he meets Faisal; his outspokenness piques the prince's interest.

  • Tyler: I guess we can discuss the elephant (or large camel) in the room here: Alec Guinness is rocking some hardcore brownface to portray Prince Faisal. Judging movies (or music or art or political views) from many decades ago against today’s standards is always a tricky exercise, but it’s not as if they couldn’t find any non-White actors around. Did the filmmakers cast Omar Sharif and think they met their racial quota?

  • Ellen: Also, it’s not as though this movie is trying to act as though it’s colorblind, or that it’s not trying to address British colonialism, so to make this racist choice is baffling. Faisal has this speech about doubting the British intentions and them considering the Arabs to be a “silly people”, and an otherwise good speech is undercut by the fact that he’s, you know, ALEC GUINNESS.

  • Tyler: Obi-Wan Tanobi? That’s the best I got.

Trying to get comfy with your co-star’s brownface (Source)

• Brighton advises Faisal to retreat after a major defeat, but Lawrence conceives a surprise attack on Aqaba, whose capture would provide a port from which the British could offload much-needed supplies. To this, he convinces Faisal to provide fifty men, led by a pessimistic Sherif Ali. The teenage orphans Daud and Farraj attach themselves to Lawrence as servants. With difficulties, they cross the Nefud Desert and travel without rest on the last stage to reach water.

  • Ellen: Ali warns Lawrence about the dangers of crossing The Sun’s Anvil, which would be a great name for a hot sauce.

• An Arab, Gasim, succumbs to fatigue and falls off his camel unnoticed during the night. When Lawrence discovers Gasim missing, he turns back and rescues him, despite dire warnings from Ali and the rest of the company. Won over, the men accept Lawrence as one of their own.

  • Ellen: It’s like Lawrence will trust local expertise up to a point, certainly more so than any of his British colleagues, but he believes in his own understanding and resolve much more. It’s currently working out for him, but I want the needle threaded a bit better.²

  • Tyler: The male ego is a powerful force.

Us at the screen: “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” (Source)

• Lawrence persuades Auda Abu Tayi, the leader of the local Howeitat tribe, to turn against the Turks. Lawrence's scheme is almost derailed when one of Ali's men kills one of Auda's men because of a blood feud. Since retaliation by the Howeitat would shatter the alliance, Lawrence announces he will execute the murderer himself. Lawrence is stunned to discover that the culprit is Gasim but shoots him anyway.

  • Tyler: After Lawrence saved him, I wondered aloud if we’d ever see Gasim again, assuming that he must play a larger role later on since they bothered to give him a name. Yet somehow I was still shocked when it was revealed that he was the murderer! What a gut punch.

  • Ellen: Lawrence also shoots him many times. What I took as him being bad at executions was self-diagnosed as something much darker later…

• The next morning, the Arabs overrun the Turkish garrison. Lawrence heads to Cairo with Daud and Farraj to inform Dryden and the new commander, General Allenby, of his victory. While crossing the Sinai Desert, Daud dies from stumbling into quicksand.

  • Ellen: THAT CHILD WAS SWALLOWED BY THE DANG EARTH

  • Tyler: We live nowhere near a desert yet I still went to bed that night terrified at the concept of quicksand. How is this a thing?!

• Although Lawrence's report of Aqaba's capture is initially disbelieved, he is promoted to major and given arms and money for the Arabs. Lawrence asks Allenby whether there is any basis for the Arabs' suspicions that the British have designs on Arabia. Allenby states that there is none.

  • Ellen: Lawrence also confesses to Gasim’s execution and Daud’s death (which Lawrence sees as his fault) and continues to confess that he enjoyed it. Lawrence is not okay upon his return to Cairo, and perhaps he never was. None of this outweighs his usefulness to the Crown as far as his superiors are concerned.

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Intermission

Take a break from Plots & Feelings with this brief Intermission.

This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by …  sand!

Need to fill a desert with something but don’t know what to use? Sand is there. Want some extra grit in your water canteen? Whether you like it or not, sand is also there. Want to swallow a person whole just for funsies? We’ve got that variety too.

Don’t listen to the haters (Source)

Have grand land and need something bland to run through your hands? Demand sand!

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• Four months later, Lawrence launches a guerrilla war by blowing up key points on the Ottoman railway between Damascus and Medina and harassing the Turks, though a chunk of his men depart after every raid. An American war correspondent, Jackson Bentley, publicizes Lawrence's exploits and makes him famous. On one raid, Farraj is badly injured. Unwilling to leave Farraj to be tortured by the enemy, Lawrence shoots him dead and flees.

  • Ellen: Perhaps there’s no other option, but after like the third explosion, don’t you think the Turks would, I don’t know, stop using the railway??

  • Tyler: That’s letting the terrorists win, Ellen! For real, though, I imagine it was a calculated risk by the Turks to efficiently move all those men, weapons, and (as we later see) horses.

Rallying the troops for another drink (Source)

• When Lawrence scouts the enemy-held city of Deraa with Ali, he is taken, along with several Arab residents, to the Turkish Bey. Lawrence is stripped, ogled, and prodded. For striking out at the Bey, Lawrence is flogged and thrown into the street, where Ali comes to his aid. The experience leaves Lawrence shaken.

  • Ellen: It’s right before this visit to Deraa that we see Lawrence, down to only like 20 men, go full cult leader and insist he is a prophet and that he will be the Arabs’ deliverance. Cool guy, no notes.

  • Tyler: Aside from having an obviously negative psychological effect on Lawrence, his reaction to the flogging is (like the scene in the beginning where he extinguishes a match flame with his fingers) an interesting hint at his more masochistic tendencies.

• Lawrence returns to British headquarters in Cairo but does not fit in. In Jerusalem, General Allenby urges him to support the "big push" on Damascus. Lawrence reluctantly returns.

• He recruits an army that is motivated more by money than by the Arab cause. They sight a column of retreating Turkish soldiers, who have just massacred the residents of Tafas. One of Lawrence's men is from Tafas and demands, "No prisoners!" When Lawrence hesitates, the man charges alone and is killed. Lawrence takes up the dead man's battle cry; the result is a slaughter in which Lawrence participates, despite Ali's protests.

  • Ellen: Even on what is arguably a killing spree, Lawrence looks damn uncomfortable with a gun.

  • Tyler: Peter O’Toole does a great job throughout of showing the internal strife within Lawrence as he descends into this ego-maniacal leader. I also appreciated the bluntness of Ali’s speech to the American reporter/photographer being like “You think we’re the savages here? Your golden boy Lawrence did all this.”

Us eating popcorn (Source)

• Lawrence's men take Damascus ahead of Allenby's forces. The Arabs set up a council to administer the city, but the British cut off access to the public utilities, leaving the desert tribesmen to debate how to maintain the occupation. Despite Lawrence's efforts, they bicker constantly, and soon abandon most of the city to the British.

• Lawrence is promoted to colonel and ordered back to Britain, as his usefulness to both Faisal and the British is at an end. To use Faisal’s words, they are “equally glad to be rid of him.” As he leaves the city, he looks longingly at the departing Arabs before his car is passed by a motorcyclist, who leaves a trail of dust in his wake.

Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?

Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.

Lawrence of Arabia’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:

• Lawrence of Arabia is based largely on the 1926 book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the 1926 autobiographical retelling of T.E. Lawrence’s time on the Arabian peninsula during the Arab Revolt. The title comes from Proverbs 9:1, which states: “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.” It is also a reference to the seven great cities of the Middle East: Cairo, Smyrna, Constantinople, Beirut, Aleppo, Damascus, and Medina.

• Lawrence had to rewrite Seven Pillars of Wisdom three times, once completely from memory after losing almost the entire manuscript at a train station. This second version, completed without many of his wartime notes, was 400,000 words long and was completed in just three months.

• While studying history at Oxford, Lawrence biked solo 2,200 miles across France to the Mediterranean (and back) to study French castles. The following year, he traveled 1,000 miles on foot (again alone) over three months through Ottoman Syria touring crusader castles.

T.E. Lawrence’s legs telling him to take a break (Source)

• A few years after returning home from the war as a colonel, Lawrence enlisted in the Royal Air Force under the pseudonym John Hume Ross. After the recruiting officer suspected Lawrence was using falsified documents, “Ross” admitted as such but eventually was admitted. Several months later, though, he was forced out after his identity was exposed, after which he joined the Royal Tank Corps under the name T.E. Shaw. After a couple years with the tankers, he eventually returned to the RAF.

• Before landing on Peter O’Toole, several other actors were considered for the lead part, including: Albert Finney, who was cast and began principal photography but was fired after two days for reasons that are still unknown; Marlon Brando, our friend from A Streetcar Named Desire, was offered the part; Anthony Perkins, who some say looks like me (Tyler); and Montgomery Clift, our old pal from From Here To Eternity.

Look good, feel good (Source)

• Alec Guinness, who plays Prince Faisal, took the role after Laurence Olivier dropped out (too many Lawrences?). Guinness claimed that while shooting the movie, his resemblance to the late prince was so convincing that people who knew Prince Faisal actually thought it was him.

  • Tyler: 

• José Ferrer, the Puerto Rican actor who played the Turkish Bey who sexually harrasses Lawrence, was upset at the small size of his pe role and only accepted on the condition that he be paid $25,000 (more than Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif combined) and given a Porsche. Ferrer later considered that his best film performance.

  • Tyler: That’s over $250,000 in today’s dollars! Not counting the Porsche, of course (of Por-se).

• The “Historical Accuracy” section is way too long and in-depth to summarize in one bullet point, but we recommend you read through it if you’re curious about the amount of liberties the movie took with the facts. Spoiler: it was quite a bit.

• Director David Lean had seven of his films listed in the British Film Institute’s list of the Top 100 British films: Brief Encounter (#2), Lawrence of Arabia (#3), Great Expectations (#5), The Bridge on the River Kwai (#11), Doctor Zhivago (#27), Oliver Twist (#46), and In Which We Serve (#92).

• In an interview with The Washington Post in 1989, Lean admitted that the film was “pervasively homoerotic” and that Lawrence and Ali were written as being in a gay relationship. He added: “So it does pervade it, the whole story, and certainly Lawrence was very if not entirely homosexual. We thought we were being very daring at the time: Lawrence and Omar, Lawrence and the Arab boys.³”

Our friends at Letterboxd appear to be correct (Source)

• Principal photography for the film lasted sixteen months, with the desert scenes shot in Jordan, Morocco, and parts of Spain. The attack of Aqaba was filmed in a dried riverbed in southern Spain and was meticulously reconstructed based on the town’s appearance in 1917. The city of Seville was used to represent Cairo, Jerusalem, and Damascus.

• Peter O’Toole was not used to riding camels (what actor is?) and decided to make his saddle more comfortable by adding a piece of foam rubber under his saddle. After many of the extras copied the approach, the local Bedouin nicknamed him “Ab al-'Isfanjah” meaning “Father of the Sponge.”

That nickname is certainly written now (Source)

• The 1990 made-for-TV film A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia serves as the unofficial sequel to Lawrence of Arabia. Ralph Fiennes, in his first film role, stars as Lawrence as he meets with Prince Faisal at the Paris Peace Conference following the end of World War I. After seeing his performance, Steven Spielberg cast Fiennes in Schindler’s List, which brought Fiennes international acclaim.

  • Ellen: Apparently the casting director agreed with my assessment in the game of “Who Looks Like Peter O’Toole?”

Fill In The Blank

How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?

Ellen: I’d like to allow The Academy to drink from my desert well. What a journey we’ve been on! Especially in the first half of this movie, I was certainly engaged, but I thought it was going to end up at best as an idealized heroic fairytale and at worst an uncritical white savior narrative. Boy did it come back with a vengeance after the intermission, and now I don’t know what I’m supposed to think of T. E. Lawrence, beyond that he was a complicated and relatively fearless man. There is so much excellent filmmaking here, from the score to shots that convey the enormity of the desert and the direness of war to intense performances.

I just… why. Why would you use brownface? I know it’s a different time, but your movie is ABOUT. RACE. It’s about whether to trust one another and take people at their word and if you can lead and follow each other. Faisal himself, in taunting Lawrence for his failures and seeming betrayal, declares him to be “almost Arab.” Did no one notice the absolute irony that the line is delivered by a very British man putting on Arab-ness as a costume?? Besides being harmful, it detracts from what is otherwise a fascinating story and expertly constructed movie.

Tyler: I’d like to gift The Academy some fresh white linens as a sign of appreciation. This is exactly the kind of epic movie I was hoping for when we embarked on “The Summer of Sweat”: a movie with a fantastic lead performance of a deeply fascinating character, sweeping visuals, a rousing score, and a story worthy of the grand scale of the production. Many movies are much longer than they need to be, but the runtime of this one felt wholly justified given the complexity of the main character and the situations he was in. 

Sure, I could’ve done with a little less brown makeup on white British actors (or, preferably, entirely different actors) and a quicker introduction (4.5 minutes of a black screen? Really?), but for a long-ass movie from the 60s I found it a largely enjoyable movie that passed the “How Often Do I Look At My Phone” test with flying colors. (The Bechdel test, on the other hand, is a different story …⁴)

Let The Credits Roll

Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:

• If you have plots and feelings of your own (on the movie or ILTBTA in general), feel free to comment on the post or simply reply to the email. If you liked reading this: tell your friends! If you hated reading this: tell your friends how much you hated it by forwarding it to them!

• If you’re a weirdo like Tyler and use Twitter, feel free to follow us there @BlankTheAcademy for ILTBTA updates, rejected jokes, and other random movie-related musings. Once we reach a million followers, we’ll offer to purchase the @ILTBTA handle from the butthead who snagged it before us.

• ILTBTA is also on Letterboxd, the social networking site for movie fans. Follow us there to read our Spreadsheet comments of our ILTBTA movies, plus our ratings of other movies we watch!

• If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.

Post-Credits Scene

Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.

Our “ILTBTA Epics: Summer of Sweat” continues with the 1959 religious epic Ben-Hur. Charlton Heston stars in the titular role as a Jewish prince turned Roman slave out for revenge in Jerusalem. Ben-Hur is available to rent from most of the usual streaming outlets, as well as (if you’re us) your local library! (Shout out to the Alexandria Library system!)

Until then, nothing is written!⁵

Riding off into the sunset thinking you’ve solved the Middle East (Source)

1. Sounds like my ex-wife!

2. Oh past Ellen, you have no idea what’s in store …

3. Ellen: Nope nope nope no thank you to that last bit

4. Ellen: The only women in this movie were emergency nuns or dead.

5. Except this post.