LAWRENCE OF ARABIA: 4K UHD 60th ANNIVERSARY (Columbia/Horizon, 1962) Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Brit-wit and bon vivant extraordinaire,
Noel Coward once quipped to Peter O’Toole, if he had been any ‘prettier’, the
picture would have been called, ‘Florence of Arabia’. He has a
point, as O’Toole, tricked out in his flowing white robes of state, his
brilliant blonde mop glistening with sweat and piercing blue eyes scanning the
horizon, cuts an indelibly handsome figure of a man, uncannily alike the real
T.E. Lawrence. Few movies in the history of film-making can justly be labeled
as classics, fewer still as cinema art. David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia
(1962) is both a testament to Lean’s prowess as a storyteller and Peter O’Toole’s
formidable merit as its enigma of the desert sand. Strange, that the film, like
T.E. Lawrence himself, should exist in a curious vacuum for which no
superlatives seem adequately to suffice. Lawrence of Arabia is a huge
thing. But the immensity of its cultural impact goes well beyond its visual
grandeur, spectacularly lensed by Freddie Young, the lyrical sweep of Maurice
Jarre’s quixotic score or even the minutiae built into the misadventures of its
protagonist, political intrigue, wed to penetrating melodrama, all of it
seamlessly woven into Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson’s screenplay. No, there is
a prismatic energy at play herein, refracting the brilliance of Lean’s own
vision so as to shed new light on the piece as a whole each time we view it. It
isn’t simply that Lean has created a handsome road show (although he most
certainly has), expertly paced and principally crafted, employing all the
intrinsic intensity of a seasoned bard with fascinating tales to tell. Like the intangible jabs of pleasure derived
from hearing a sublime poetic verse read aloud by a great orator, Lawrence
of Arabia provides an intoxicating elixir, sending its vast tributaries to
quench our hearts, minds and yes, even our souls with its perennial
ingeniousness.
Lawrence of
Arabia is perhaps the definitive example of Lean’s showmanship at its zenith,
an undeniably romanticized valentine made by one man about another, the latter
larger-than-life, and, whose egotism was no less unctuous. And, like T.E.
Lawrence, as complex and perplexing a portrait of cavalier heroism both in
front of and behind the camera that, sadly, is no more. Lean’s penchant for bold visual compositions
makes Lawrence of Arabia not simply the stimulating masterwork it has
remained all of these long years, to be marveled with renewed humility and
undiluted appreciation, but a nearly indescribable piece of exquisite celluloid
perfection. That all of Lean’s luminosity and transcendence might have been
lost to the ages, through years of neglect and improper storage, multiple edits
and limited theatrical and television reissues, nauseatingly interrupted by
commercials, was a disaster narrowly averted when film preservationists, Robert
A. Harris and Jim Katz undertook the monumental task of resurrecting Lawrence
of Arabia from the dead in 1988. Then, of course, the work was limited to
exhausting archival research for a usable print master on which to perform a
process of reconstruction and thorough photo-chemical restoration. Although
Harris and Katz were hampered by Columbia’s lack of archival fine grain
preservation masters, they were infinitely blessed in having David Lean – very
much alive and sincerely eager to contribute invaluable insight on the making
of the movie. The director even joked that it took Harris and Katz nearly twice
as long to salvage Lawrence of Arabia from the ashes as it did for him
to originally shoot it in the Nefu. Indeed, Lean had endured his own private
war for almost three years in the inhospitable heat and sand, searching for the
essence of a man who, in Lawrence’s own words was “enfranchised, untamed and
untrammeled by convention”.
Lean found his enigma in Peter
O’Toole – a relatively unknown Brit-born actor capable of infusing the filmic
Lawrence with an impeccable grace and incurable vanity. O’Toole inhabits the
character so completely – both physically and from within - that it is
astonishing to consider just how close he came to not getting the part. In
fact, Albert Finney had been first up and had even screen tested for the part.
But O’Toole, with his penetrating blue eyes, is the quintessence of that
paradox, never entirely known or appreciated, neither by those who stood at
arm’s length of the real Lawrence or by the millions who only saw him through
the miracle of old B&W newsreels. Yet, O’Toole is Lawrence; the actor,
inseparable from his alter ego. For the part of Sharif Ali, Lean made another
inspired casting choice in Omar Sharif; a dark and statuesque star of Arab TV.
Sharif had never appeared in a major motion picture before, nor was he at all
certain that he wanted to. Sharif, who had regarded his own fame as quite
satisfactory, was cajoled by his agent to fly to London and meet David Lean at
the Dorchester. The meeting was fortuitous to say the least; each man becoming
quite spellbound by the other. Lean, who could be very aloof when dealing with
actors, bestowed his hawk-like precision on Sharif, guiding his performance
with such an intuitive understanding that Sharif would forever regard this
experience as the highpoint in his movie-making career. Perhaps Lean agreed,
evidently enough to cast Sharif in the title role of his subsequent epic, Doctor
Zhivago in 1965.
The rest of the cast was rounded
out by an impeccable roster of superb character actors: Arthur Kennedy as
sycophantic photographer, Jackson Bentley, the urbane Claude Rains as wily
politico, Mr. Dryden, Donald Wolfit as irascible Gen. Murray, earthy Anthony
Quinn - lusty Auda Abu Tayi, Jose Ferrer as an ‘implied’ bisexual Turkish Bey,
and, Jack Hawkins as stoic Gen. Allenby. For the pivotal role of Prince Feisal,
Lean turned to his resident ‘good luck charm’; the consummate chameleon, Alec
Guinness. Lean and Guinness – both craftsman in their own field – had a mutual tempestuousness
for what each perceived as the other’s meddling in their stylistic creativity
and work ethics. Yet both were to benefit from their association and perhaps
begrudgingly knew that, without the other, their contributions remained half as
good. Whatever the crux for this minor unpleasantness, Lean and Guinness shared
as much public regard and mutual respect for each other. This too would endure
until Lean’s passing in 1991. Lean once claimed that directing ought to be a
very selfish pursuit. “The more a film is one man’s vision, the better.”
Indeed, Lean’s capabilities on Lawrence of Arabia extended far beyond the reach
of any of his contemporaries. Many had tried to tell T.E. Lawrence’s story, but
to no avail. Lean, not only conquered history, but managed the coup to give us
a facsimile of Lawrence, so uncannily pure and investigating, it easily has
since eclipsed the memory of the real man it sought to emulate. In retrospect,
Lean seems particularly engaged, able to pluck the minutest detail from his
character study and extol its inner tumult in relief from the broader political
canvas at the epicenter of the action; interpreting even the landscape in pure
cinematic terms and in ways that continue to tantalize and corrupt our senses
with an extraordinary amalgam of stark realism and profound visual
majesty.
Lean’s reputation as the leading
purveyor of big screen epics would be forever cemented with this sweeping
fictionalization. Working from Lawrence’s private journals, diaries and public
writings, the screenplay by Robert Bolt (and, an unaccredited Michael Wilson)
challenged the mysterious circumstances surrounding Lawrence’s death. From this
springboard, Lean probes the legacy of a man whose legend was shrouded in
speculation and never satisfactorily explained away by the historical record.
In many ways, conceiving the tale as one gigantic flashback, serves to obscure
what little facts are actually known about T.E. Lawrence, while simultaneously
heightening and preserving his mythology. Indeed, the real Lawrence was a
master manipulator of his own personal publicity as political propaganda.
Remarkably, although many studios (including RKO and MGM) had toyed with the
idea of doing a bio-pic on Lawrence since the mid-1930s, no film project ever
went beyond the preliminary stages until David Lean began more concrete
negotiations to secure Albert Finney to play the part. Screen tests were made.
And although Finney looked the part, and was a consummate actor besides, there
was something in his performance that utterly displeased Lean. Finney was
trying to embody the man rather than suggest the enigma. He had grounded his performance in too much
realism. His Lawrence was a man, not a myth. Yet, there was very little reality
in Lawrence's life story to go on. What was required to do justice to Lawrence
was something else; a bottling of his spirit, that elusive absence of the flesh
and sinew for a Godlike creature of his own design.
After some consternation, Lean
turned to Peter O’Toole for the plum opportunity. O'Toole had one immediate
advantage: he was a virtual unknown to audiences outside of Britain. Better
still, he looked more like Lawrence than Finney, and perhaps startling as close
to Lawrence as the real McCoy in his flowing white robes and headdress. But
O'Toole was also a highly competent actor who, like Lawrence, possessed
something of that inner self-appointed charm and pomp without the grating
arrogance to carry off the part. Fittingly, the Bolt/Wilson screenplay begins
with Lawrence’s death. He loses control of his motorcycle on a lonely English
country road. From the resplendence of his thought-numbing state funeral, we
regress to a basement map room in Cairo where Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) is a
somewhat socially backward and generally disenchanted British officer. He is
plucked from this interminable obscurity by Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains) a
subversive politician, and sent into the desert to ‘observe’ the brewing
entanglement, collectively earmarked as the ‘Arab revolt’ - much to the strenuous
objections of Colonel Brighton (Anthony Quayle) who regards Lawrence as little
more than a defiant, and not terribly bright upstart.
Given the opportunity of a lifetime
as special envoy to Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), Lawrence’s defiance of mother
England and the hidden agenda of its political overseers in making the Arab
nation a principality overseen by the British, is counter-intuitive to his
orders from Gen. Lord Edmund Allenby (Jack Hawkins). But it ingratiates him to
Feisal, who also has ulterior motives in supporting Lawrence’s seemingly
impossible quest to unite the warring Arab factions into a single army equipped
to ward off the Turks. To this end, Lawrence brokers a fragile truce between
Feisal’s Sharif Ali (Omar Sharif) and the lusty Auda Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn).
Ali’s innate skepticism of Lawrence is unfounded and gradually subsides,
particularly after Lawrence challenges the precept “nothing is written” for
those who have the courage and conviction to pen their own destiny. After conquering
the Turkish stronghold at the port city of Acaba, once thought of as an
impregnable, Lawrence gains Ali’s respect and becomes his trusted confidant.
Unfortunately, Lawrence’s newfound popularity goes to his head. He becomes
careless in his self-importance – a move to result in the death of Farraj
(Michael Ray), an orphaned peasant he took under his tutelage earlier. Sometime
later, Lawrence is captured and taken before the Turkish Bey (Jose Ferrer)
where he is brutalized and sodomized. A shattered man, whose thirst for revenge
now supersedes his desire for a peaceable victory, Lawrence transforms the Arab
revolt into a private bloody war, bent on the complete annihilation of the
Turkish forces.
His noblest intentions in tatters,
Lawrence watches in disbelief as the fragile truce he helped to forge between
the various Arab factions unravels into an unruly rabble bickering and fighting
among themselves until British forces intercede and reestablish control in
Cairo. Lawrence confesses to Allenby he has bungled the entire affair; then,
confides an even more startling realization - he is on the verge of a nervous
breakdown. Brighton, who can only now fathom what the clarity of Lawrence’s own
ambitions has wrought, and furthermore, how it too has been sacrificed for
Feisal and Allenby’s benefit of establishing an Arab republic, watches as the
one-time noblest champion of its cause is quietly disavowed by both sides.
Lawrence is retired with full honors from the Army and shipped back to England
where, as the audience already knows from the prologue, a tragic finality
awaits. In these final moments, with Lawrence driven through the desert via
escort, passed by a caravan of camels on one side - a symbolic reminder of the
past he is leaving behind, and a motorcyclist on the other, the ominous
harbinger of imminent death, the immensity of Lawrence’s tragic brief span on
earth is elevated to that of an elusive mirage. Like Sharif Ali’s first
appearance in the story – materializing as a shimmering spec on the horizon –
this penultimate triage of images rising from the Nefu, resurrect the essence
of a lost dream that the current Lawrence, demoralized and with his reputation
in ruins, cannot appreciate for the full breadth in its meaning.
David Lean’s subtlety extols the
poignant tragedy in this moment for the rest of us, and in it, Lawrence of
Arabia achieves an indefinable preeminence as perhaps the most intricate
and impassioned, yet largely fictional bio-pic ever put on film. Arguably, Lawrence of Arabia is the most
perfectly realized epic - ever. Undeniably, it remains a visual feast, breaking
new ground with Anne V. Coates’ editing techniques borrowed from the French New
Wave (the blowing out of a match, cut directly to the sun rising in the east,
just one of the most inspirational visual highlights). Lean tirelessly toiled
under some of the harshest conditions to make Lawrence of Arabia a
masterpiece. Indeed, Lean often worked best under such inhospitable
circumstances – setting up a makeshift ‘town’ where cast and crew lived while
shooting in the desert. Even native, Omar Sharif found the heat oppressive. It
melted the unprocessed film in its metal cans, forcing cinematographer, Freddie
Young to pack the reels and the camera in ice between takes. That Lean was unable
to screen dailies also put a strain on composer, Maurice Jarre, who basically
had to write his entire score for the picture without seeing so much as a shred
of film first. What proved inspirational to both actors and crew was Lean's
never-waning zeal and exuberance, often fueled by some inspirational
discussions, long into the night, around a campfire, after a hard day's shoot.
Lawrence of
Arabia is one of the truly grand road show events of the 1960s - a Royal
Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth with tickets sold out months in
advance. Alas, shortly after the world premiere, all prints were drastically
cut to satisfy exhibitor’s requests for more nightly viewings. Although Lean
returned to make these initial trims, the film continued to be pared down without
his approval thereafter, resulting in various release prints that in no way
accurately reflected the director’s original vision. For decades thereafter, Lawrence
of Arabia continued to play in various venues and revival houses, with
audiences never quite knowing which cut they were about to screen; the excised
material thought to have been discarded long ago. Mercifully, some thirty years
into the future, restoration experts, Robert A. Harris and James Katz
discovered virtually all of the missing footage had survived. Together with
Lean and Anne V. Coates, Harris and Katz reassembled Lawrence
with a strict adherence to Lean’s shooting script notations. The absence of
whole audio portions necessitated the return of surviving principle cast
members to dub in their lines of dialogue, with the late Jack Hawkins’ part
eventually recorded by another actor, and rather convincingly too.
Lawrence of
Arabia - the restored version - was given an ambitiously mounted road show
reissue in 1988, at an epoch when such revivals were virtually nonexistent. Lawrence
played in only the major cities across the U.S. and Canada. But the picture’s
re-emergence on the big screen proved to be much more than a reintroduction of
the movie, as originally intended, and brought back from the brink for newer
audiences to appreciate. It also served to shed much needed light on the
establishment of a national film registry, dedicated to the preservation and
restoration of celluloid art. The video cassette and Laserdisc evolution put Lawrence
of Arabia on the home video map as one of Columbia's top sellers. It also
proved to the studios that 'old movies' had a shelf life well beyond their
original theatrical expiration date. Alas, Sony Home Entertainment’s various
releases of Lawrence of Arabia on home video since 1988 were rather
depressingly second rate. The first on DVD, fitted in a lavish cloth encasement
now out of print, suffered from some color-timing issues and edge enhancement
that belied all of the fine efforts Harris and Katz had put into their
restoration. Several years later, Sony tried again, this time with Harris
overseeing the efforts and color fidelity greatly improved. Unfortunately, the
edge effects remained in place. Worse, Sony had also inexplicably chosen to
chop and spread the new transfer across 2 discs – not at the intermission
(this, after all, would have made sense) but roughly six-minutes into its
second half after the entr’acte.
When Sony debuted the Blu-ray
format in 2003 all of its discs contained a screener showing the briefest of
clips from Lawrence of Arabia. In fact, Lawrence was the
primary reason I became an early adopter of the Blu-ray format. But shortly
thereafter, Sony announced too much work was needed to get Lawrence of
Arabia up to speed for hi-def, and within months, the title vanished from
their marketing campaigns. In 2014, the long-awaited moment finally arrived.
And we, who had waited for so long to see Lawrence of Arabia as David
Lean intended, could breathe a sigh of relief. For here was a home video
presentation so breathtaking, sumptuous and remarkable, it easily put the
others to shame, revealing all of the attributes of 70mm large gauge film at a
glance. I could forgive almost any delay
as Lawrence of Arabia on Blu-ray was well worth the time it took to fully
restore it to its’ opening night splendor.
I didn’t think anything could top
that experience. But then, in 2020, arrived Sony’s native 4K release, revealing
yet more fine detail and subtler gradients in both textures and color. In a
word – gorgeous. Too bad for fans, the only way to own Lawrence of Arabia
in 4K in 2020 was as part of the Columbia Classics Vol. 1, box set. Sony
is only now getting around to rectifying the situation with a stand-alone 4K
release to mark the picture’s 60th anniversary. Word to the wise.
Those who already own the Columbia Classics Vol. 1 gift set can skip
over this release – it is a reissue with NO new content or mastering efforts
applied. After all, what is there left to tweak, improve upon or otherwise
update? Absolutely nothing!!! This UHD 4K transfer reveals a startling amount
of fine detail and film grain looking indigenous to its source. Colors pop.
Flesh tones exhibit superior tonality. One can see thread count in close-ups of
uniforms and creases in leather boots. The 5.1 DTS soundtrack yields
indescribable clarity; dialogue sounding natural, Maurice Jarre’s score,
inspiring. There is absolutely nothing to complain about herein. This is
the definitive experience of David Lean’s greatest epic.
This steel book edition of Lawrence
of Arabia plays host to the myriad of treasures that have appeared
elsewhere throughout the many home video incarnations: nearly a half-hour of reflections,
recorded for the 2014 release, featuring then, 80-year-old Peter O’Toole (whom
we lost in 2013), the hour-long ‘making of’ that was a part of the 2000 DVD,
9-minutes of Steven Spielberg, affectionately waxing about the impact of the
movie on his own career, four vintage featurettes, totaling roughly 20-minutes,
newsreel footage of the New York premiere, and a barrage of advertising junkets
– stills, trailers, and other materials created for the subsequent re-issues,
plus the 7 min. balcony scene between O’Toole and Jack Hawkins. At the time of
the ’88 restoration, this scene was left on the cutting room floor as all of
Hawkins’ dialogue needed to be dubbed and afterward was deemed as sounding not
terribly convincing by Lean. We also get 8 min. of Martin Scorsese’s thoughts
on the film, and a fascinating featurette on restoring Lawrence in hi-def. More
vintage newsreels and featurettes follow. And then, there is “In Love with
The Desert” – a superb tribute, hosted by production assistant, Eddie
Fowlie who waxes affectionately for 84-minutes about the times he and Lean
spent making magic amid the dunes. The
goodies top out with brief archival reflections from William Friedkin,
Scorsese, Spielberg and the late Sidney Pollack – whose expertise, wit and
film-making prowess I must admit, I greatly admire and even more deeply miss. Bottom
line: Lawrence of Arabia is a must have. There is really nothing more to
be said, except that if you do not already own this, you should. Movies from
any vintage of this caliber are rare. Today, they are virtually nonexistent.
This 4K re-issue should be considered only for those who do not own the
Columbia Classics 4K gift set. As before, very – very – highly
recommended!
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
5+
VIDEO/AUDIO
5+
EXTRAS
5+
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