TheMovieStory

Lawrence of Arabia is an award-winning 1962 epic film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Austrian Sam Spiegel (through his British company, Horizon Pictures), from a script by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson (Lean and Spiegel had recently completed the acclaimed film, The Bridge on the River Kwai). The film stars Peter O’Toole in the title role. It is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential films in the history of filmmaking. The dramatic score by Maurice Jarre, and Super Panavision 70 cinematography by Freddie Young, are also hugely acclaimed.

The film depicts Lawrence’s experiences in Arabia during World War I, in particular his attacks on Aqaba and Damascus and his involvement in the Arab National Council. Its themes include Lawrence’s emotional struggles with violence in war (especially the conflicts between Arabic tribes and the slaughter of the Turkish army), his personal identity (”Who are you?” is a recurring line throughout the film), and his divided allegiance between his native Britain and its army, and his newfound comrades within the Arabian desert tribes. The film is unusual in having no women in speaking roles.

Plot

The film opens with Lawrence (Peter O’Toole) as a civilian, riding his motorcycle down a narrow English country road, only to be killed when he tries to avoid a collision with a couple of bicyclists. His funeral is staged at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Reporters try to gain insights into this remarkable, but enigmatic, man from people who knew him, but with little success.

The movie then flashes back to Cairo during World War I, where Lawrence is a misfit British lieutenant, notable only for his insolence and knowledge of the Bedouin. Over the objections of a skeptical General Murray (Donald Wolfit), he is sent by Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains) of the Arab Bureau to assess the prospects of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness) in his revolt against the Turks, allies of the Germans.

On his journey, his Bedouin guide is killed by Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif) for drinking from his well without permission. Just outside Feisal’s camp, he encounters his superior officer, Colonel Brighton (Anthony Quayle), who orders him to keep quiet, make his assessment and then leave. He promptly ignores these commands when he meets Feisal. His fine intellect and outspokenness piques the prince’s interest.

Brighton advises the Arab leader to retreat after a major defeat, but Lawrence proposes an alternative, an attack on Aqaba. If taken, the town would provide a port from which the British could offload much-needed supplies for the rebellion, but it is too strongly guarded against a naval assault. However, Lawrence proposes an assault on the lightly-defended landward side. He convinces Feisal to provide fifty men on camels, led by Sherif Ali. As they prepare to leave, two teenage orphan boys, Daud (John Dimech) and Farraj (Michel Ray), attach themselves to Lawrence as his servants. They cross the Nefud Desert, considered impassable even by the Bedouins, travelling day and night on the last stage to reach water. Gasim (I. S. Johar) succumbs to fatigue and falls off his camel unnoticed during the night. The rest make it to an oasis, but Lawrence turns back for the lost man, risking his own life. When he rescues Gasim, the Bedouins are impressed, even the formerly-skeptical Sherif Ali.

Having crossed the desert, Lawrence meets with Auda abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn), the leader of the powerful local Howeitat tribe, and convinces him to turn against the Turks. Lawrence’s plans are almost derailed when one of Ali’s men kills one of Auda’s because of a blood feud. Since no Howeitat can retaliate without angering Ali’s followers, Lawrence declares that he will execute the murderer himself. He is stunned to discover that the culprit is Gasim, the man whose life he had saved, but he shoots him regardless. The intact alliance then sweeps into Aqaba and captures it in a surprise attack. Auda is less than pleased though, as the captured Turkish funds are in the form of paper notes, not gold as Lawrence had claimed.

Lawrence heads to Cairo, to inform Dryden and the new commanding general, General Allenby (Jack Hawkins), of his victory. Crossing the Sinai Desert, his servant Daud dies when he stumbles into quicksand. Lawrence is promoted two ranks to major and given arms and money to support the Arabs. He asks Allenby whether the Arabs’ suspicions have any basis, that the British have designs on Arabia after the Turks are driven out; the general says at first that he’s not a politician, then when pressed, that they don’t.

Lawrence launches a guerrilla war, blowing up trains and harassing the Turks at every turn. American war correspondent Jackson Bentley (Arthur Kennedy) makes him world famous by publicizing his exploits. With winter approaching, many of the tribesmen go home for the year, leaving fewer and fewer die-hard supporters to continue fighting. On one raid, Farraj is badly injured when the detonator he is carrying blows up prematurely. Unwilling to leave him for the Turks to torture, Lawrence is forced to shoot him before fleeing.

Down to twenty men, he scouts the enemy-held city of Daraa with Ali, but is taken, along with several Arab residents, to the decadent Turkish Bey (Jose Ferrer). For striking the Bey after he is covetously ogled and prodded, Lawrence is severely beaten and then thrown out into the street. Though the matter is controversial, historians and biographers (including Lawrence’s authorized biographer, Jeremy Wilson) say that the rape implied by Seven Pillars of Wisdom and other sources is also implied in the film.^[1] Traumatized by the experience, Lawrence abandons the fight and makes a futile attempt to return to ordinary life.

n Jerusalem, Allenby urges him to go back to the fighting to support his “big push” on Damascus, but Lawrence is a changed, tormented man and, at first, does not want to return. Lawrence relents and recruits an army, including many known killers and cutthroats motivated by money, rather than the Arab cause. They come upon a column of retreating Turkish soldiers, who have just slaughtered the inhabitants of the village of Tafas. One of Lawrence’s men is from the village; he demands, “No prisoners!” Then he charges the Turks by himself and is killed. Lawrence takes up the cry, “No prisoners!”–resulting in a massacre. Lawrence’s men then take Damascus before Allenby.

The Arabs set up a council to administer the city, but they are tribesmen, not a nation. Unable to maintain the electricity, telephones, and waterworks, and clashing constantly with each other, they soon abandon most of Damascus to the British. Lawrence is promoted to colonel and then immediately deactivated and sent home, his usefulness at an end. The negotiations are left to Feisal and the British and French diplomats. A morose, dejected Lawrence rides in a staff car on his way back to England.

Cast

• Peter O’Toole as T. E. Lawrence. Albert Finney — at the time a virtual unknown — was Lean’s first choice to play Lawrence, but Finney was not sure the film would be a success and turned it down. Marlon Brando was also offered the part. Alec Guinness had previously played Lawrence in the play Ross, and was briefly considered for the part, but David Lean and Sam Spiegel thought him too old.
• Alec Guinness as Prince Feisal. Feisal was originally to be portrayed by Laurence Olivier; Guinness, who performed in other David Lean films, got the part when Olivier dropped out. Guinness was made up to look as much like the real Feisal as possible; he recorded in his diaries that, while shooting in Jordan, he met several people who had known Feisal who actually mistook him for the late prince. Guinness said in interviews that he developed his Arab accent from a conversation he had with Omar Sharif.
• Anthony Quinn as Auda abu Tayi. Quinn got very much into his role; he spent hours applying his own makeup, using a photograph of the real Auda to make himself look as much like him as he could. One anecdote has Quinn arriving on-set for the first time in full costume, whereupon Lean, mistaking him for a native, asked his assistant to ring Quinn and notify him that they were replacing him with the new arrival.
• Jack Hawkins as General Allenby. Sam Spiegel pushed Lean to cast Cary Grant or Laurence Olivier (who was engaged at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and declined). Lean, however, convinced him to choose Hawkins due to his work for them on The Bridge on the River Kwai. Hawkins shaved his head for the role and reportedly clashed with David Lean several times during filming. Alec Guinness recounts a specific instance where he was reprimanded by Lean for celebrating the end of a day’s filming with an impromptu dance.
• Omar Sharif as Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish. The role was offered to many actors before Omar Sharif was cast. Horst Buchholz was the first choice, but had already signed on for the film One, Two, Three. Alain Delon had a successful screen test, but ultimately declined due to the brown contact lenses he would have had to wear. Maurice Ronet and Dilip Kumar were also considered.
• José Ferrer as the Turkish Bey. Ferrer considered this his best film performance, saying an interview: “If I was to be judged by any one film performance, it would be my five minutes in Lawrence.” Peter O’Toole once said that he learned more about screen acting from Ferrer than he could learn in any acting class.
• Anthony Quayle as Colonel Harry Brighton. Quayle, a veteran of military roles, was cast after Jack Hawkins, the original choice, was shifted to the part of Allenby. Quayle and Lean argued over how to portray the character, with Lean feeling Brighton to be an honorable character, while Quayle thought him an idiot.
• Claude Rains as Mr. Dryden. Rains had previously worked with Lean on The Passionate Friends. Lean considered Rains one of his favorite actors and was happy to work with him again.
• Arthur Kennedy as Jackson Bentley. In the early days of the production, when the Bentley (Thomas) character had a more prominent role in the film, Kirk Douglas was considered for the part. Later, Edmond O’Brien was cast in the part. O’Brien filmed the Jerusalem scene, but he became ill and had to be replaced at the last moment by Kennedy.
• Donald Wolfit as General Murray. Wolfit was a legendary stage actor and one of Peter O’Toole’s mentors.
• Michel Ray as Farraj. At the time, Ray was an up-and-coming Anglo-Indian actor, who had previously appeared in several films, including Irving Rapper’s The Brave One and Anthony Mann’s The Tin Star. This however would be one of his last roles. Ray would later become a prominent British businessman, and is the majority shareholder in the Heineken brewing company, worth over ƒ3,000,000,000 sterling as of 2002. [1]
• I.S. Johar as Gasim. Johar was a well-known Bollywood actor who occasionally appeared in international productions.
• Zia Mohyeddin as Tafas. Mohyeddin was one of Pakistan’s best-known actors, and launched a successful stage career in London after this film’s success. Most famously, he played Dr. Aziz in the stage and TV adaptation of A Passage to India in the late 1960s.
• Gamil Ratib as Majid. Ratib was a veteran Egyptian actor. His English was not considered sufficient, and he was dubbed by Robert Rietti in the final film.
• John Dimech as Daud. Dimech was a waiter from Malta. In 1959 he had appeared in Killers of Kilimanjaro.
• Hugh Miller as the RAMC colonel. Miller worked on several of Lean’s films as a dialogue coach, and was one of several bit parts played by the film’s crew (see below).
• Fernando Sancho as the Turkish sergeant. A well-known Spanish actor (best remembered for his roles in many spaghetti Westerns), Sancho became close friends with Lean during filming.
• Stuart Saunders as the regimental sergeant major.
• Jack Gwillim as the club secretary. Gwillim was a well-known British character, frequently cast in bit parts in classic British films.
• Kenneth Fortescue as Allenby’s aide.
• Harry Fowler as Corporal Potter.
• Howard Marion-Crawford as the medical officer. Marion-Crawford was cast at the last possible minute, during filming of the “Damascus” scenes in Seville.
• John Ruddock as Elder Harith. Ruddock was a noted Shakespearean actor.
• Norman Rossington as Corporal Jenkins. Rossington had, somewhat ironically, starred alongside Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. He would later play the Beatles’ nerve-wracked manager in A Hard Day’s Night and appear in several of the Carry On films.
• Jack Hedley as a reporter.
• Henry Oscar as Silliam, Feisal’s servant. Oscar was a well-known stage and screen actor who frequently played ethnic parts, including the Sudanese doctor in The Four Feathers (1939).
• Peter Burton as a Damascus Sheik. Burton is perhaps best-known for playing Major Boothroyd (later Q in the Bond film Dr. No).

Besides the above, various members of the film’s crew portrayed bit characters. First assistant director Roy Stevens played the truck driver who transports Lawrence and Farraj to the Cairo HQ at the end of Act I; the Sergeant who stops Lawrence and Farraj (”Where do you think you’re going to, Mustapha?”) is construction assistant, Fred Bennett; and screenwriter Robert Bolt has a wordless cameo as one of the officer’s watching Allenby and Lawrence’s conference in the courtyard (he is smoking a pipe).

Real characters

• T. E. Lawrence
• Auda ibu Tayi
• General Allenby
• Prince Feisal
• Tafas, Lawrence’s guide to Feisal
• Farraj and Daud, Lawrence’s servants
• Gasim, the man Lawrence rescues from the desert
• General Murray
• Medical Officer in Damascus, unnamed, but based on an incident in Seven Pillars of Wisdom
• Tallal, charges the Turkish column at Tafas

Historical accuracy

The historical accuracy of the film, and particularly its portrayal of Lawrence himself, has been called into question by numerous scholars. Most of the film’s characters are either real or based on real characters to varying degrees. The events depicted in the film are largely based on accepted historical fact and Lawrence’s own writing about events, though they have various degrees of romanticisation.

Some scenes — such as the attack on Aqaba — were heavily fictionalized, while those dealing with the Arab Council were inaccurate, in as much as the council remained more or less in power in Syria until France deposed Feisal in 1920. The theme (in the second half of the film) that Lawrence’s Arab army deserted almost to a man as he moved further north was completely fictional. The film’s timeline of the Arab Revolt and World War I, and the geography of the Hedjaz region, are frequently questionable. For instance, Bentley interviews Feisal in late 1917, after the fall of Aqaba, saying the United States has not yet entered the war; yet America had been in the war for several months by that point in time. Further, Lawrence’s involvement in the Arab Revolt prior to the attack on Aqaba — such as his involvement in the seizures of Yenbo and Wejh — is completely excised.

Production

[edit] Pre-production

Previous films about T. E. Lawrence had been planned but had not been made. In the 1940s, Alexander Korda was interested in filming The Seven Pillars of Wisdom with Laurence Olivier as Lawrence, but had to pull out due to financial difficulties. Besides previous attempts, Terrence Rattigan was developing his play Ross, centred primarily on Lawrence’s alleged homosexuality simultaneous to pre-production to this film, with Sam Spiegel growing furious and unsuccessfully attempting to have the play suppressed. (Ironically, the furour surrounding the play helped gain publicity for the film.)^{[citation needed]} When Lawrence of Arabia was first announced, Lawrence’s biographer Lowell Thomas offered producer Spiegel and screenwriters Bolt and Wilson a large amount of research material he had produced on Lawrence during and after his time with him in the Arab Revolt. Spiegel rejected the offer.

Michael Wilson wrote the original draft of the screenplay. However, David Lean was dissatisfied with Wilson’s work, primarily because his treatment focused primarily on the historical and political aspects of the Arab Revolt. Lean hired Robert Bolt to re-write the script in order to make it a character study of Lawrence himself. While many (if not most) of the characters and scenes are Wilson’s invention, virtually all of the dialogue in the finished film was written by Bolt.

Lean reportedly watched John Ford’s film The Searchers (1956) to help him develop ideas as to how to shoot the film.^{[citation needed}

Filming

The film was made by Horizon Pictures and Columbia Pictures. Shooting began on May 15, 1961 and ended on October 20, 1962.

The desert scenes were shot in Jordan and Morocco, as well as Almería and Doñana in Spain. The film was originally to be filmed entirely in Jordan: the government of King Hussein was extremely helpful in providing logistical assistance, location scouting, transportation, and extras. During the production of the film, in fact, Hussein met and married Toni Gardner, who was working as a switchboard operator in Aqaba. One of the film’s technical advisors/horse wranglers in Jordan was a descendant of Auda abu Tayi.^{[citation needed]} The only tension occurred when local Jordanian officials learned that English actor Henry Oscar, who did not speak Arabic, would be filmed reciting the Qur’an; permission was granted only on condition that an imam be present to ensure that there were no misquotes.

In Jordan, Lean planned to film in, among other places, the real Aqaba and the archaeological site at Petra, which the real Lawrence had been fond of as a place of study. However, the production had to be moved to Spain, much to Lean’s regret, due to cost and outbreaks of illness among the cast and crew before these scenes could be shot. The attack on Aqaba (one of the more stirring and memorable scenes in the movie with a spectacular pan shot of dust rising up from behind the charging Arabs while Turkish cannons are aimed harmlessly out to sea) was reconstructed in a dried river bed in southern Spain; it consisted of over 300 buildings and was meticulously based on the town’s appearance in 1917. The execution of Gassim and the train attacks were filmed in the Almeria region, with the former’s filming being delayed because of a flash flood. The city of Seville was also used to represent Cairo and Jerusalem, with the appearance of the Alcázar of Seville and the Plaza de España. All of the film’s interiors were shot in Spain, including Lawrence’s first meeting with Feisal and the scene in Auda’s tent.

The Tafas massacre was filmed in Ouarzazate, Morocco, with Moroccan army troops substituting for the Turkish army; however, Lean was unable to film as much as he wanted because the soldiers were uncooperative and impatient.^{[citation needed]} One of the second-unit directors for the Morocco scenes was Andre de Toth, who suggested a shot wherein bags of blood would be machine-gunned, spraying the screen with blood. Assistant director Nicholas Roeg approached Lean with this idea, but Lean found it disgusting. De Toth subsequently left the project.

The film’s production was frequently delayed because, unusually, the film started shooting without a finished script. After Wilson quit early in the production, Bolt took over, with playwright Beverley Cross working on the script in the interim (although none of his material made it to the final film). A further mishap occurred when Bolt was arrested for taking part in an anti-nuclear weapons demonstration, and Spiegel had to persuade Bolt to sign a recognizance of good behaviour in order for him to be released from jail and continue working on the script.

Camels caused several problems on set. O’Toole was not used to riding camels and found the saddle to be uncomfortable. While in Amman during a break in filming, he bought a piece of foam rubber at a market and added it to his saddle. Many of the extras copied the idea and sheets of the foam can be seen on many of the horse and camel saddles. The Bedouins nicknamed O’Toole “Ab al Isfanjah”^{[Correct transliteration required]} (أب الإسفنجة), meaning “Father of the Sponge”.^[7] The idea spread and to this day, many Bedouins add foam rubber to their saddles. Later, during the filming of the Aqaba scene, O’Toole was nearly killed when he fell from his camel, but fortunately, it stood over him, preventing the horses of the extras from trampling him. (A very similar mishap befell the real Lawrence at the Battle of Abu El Lissal in 1917.)

In another mishap, O’Toole seriously injured his hand during filming by punching through the window of a caravan. A brace or bandage can be seen on his left thumb during the first train attack scene, presumably due to this incident.^{[citation needed]}

Music

The score, composed by Maurice Jarre, was performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Although Sir Adrian Boult is credited as the conductor of the score in the film’s credits, he was unable to conduct most of the score, due in part to his failure to adapt to the intricate timings of each cue. Maurice Jarre replaced him as the conductor, and is so credited on the original soundtrack recording, which was originally released on Colpix Records, the records division of Columbia Pictures, in 1962. A remastered edition appeared on Castle Music, a division of the Sanctuary Records Group, on August 28, 2006.

Kenneth Alford’s march The Voice of the Guns (1917) is prominently featured on the soundtrack. One of Alford’s other pieces, the Colonel Bogey March, was the theme song for Lean’s previous film, Bridge on the River Kwai.

Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 1963, and won seven, including Best Picture.

Academy Awards