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Lawrence of Arabia
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Movie
| Book
| Author
| Director
& cast
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Book: Seven pillars of Wisdom (1927)
Movie: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Premise
movie:
"The utterly spell-binding biography of a WWI hero,
Lawrence of Arabia comes close to perfection in the realms of
cinematography, score, script and performances. During World War I,
in the Middle East, the prime British interest was to keep the Turks
from gaining control of the Suez Canal. In contrast, the existence
of various allied Bedouin tribes in the region was of little
interest, especially so given their fragmentation and archaic
fighting methods. However, to T.E.Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) the Arab
groups are all that's worth considering. Unfortunately he's stuck
with a desk job in Cairo where he spends all day colouring in maps,
lumbered with less than scintillating companions. However, luck
comes his way when Mr. Dryden (Claude Rains), a political figure,
manages to persuade Gen. Murray (Donald Wolfit) that Lawrence should
be seconded to the British Arab Bureau. There his undoubted
intellectual skills can be put to use gathering information, as well
as placing him far out of the way in Arabia.
Thus, to Lawrence's child-like glee, he gets offered an open-ended
mission to find Prince Feisel (Alec Guinness) and determine what the
long-term trends are. However, the Bedouin are nomads and Feisel
could be anywhere within a rather large expanse of desert, which is
why Lawrence teams up with a native guide and starts learning how to
ride a camel. Into the wilderness they head, an incongruous pairing
of callow British officer and knowledgeable tribesman. Unfortunately
though, the ancient Bedouin squabbles raise their ugly head when the
trail leads them into a section of the desert which is off-limits to
the guide. As insignificant as they are, their appearance is noted
and soon a dust cloud on the horizon resolves into the form of
Sherif Ali Ibn El Kharish (Omar Sharif). Determined to identify the
intruders, Sherif shoots the guide in cold-blood and toys with the
shocked Lawrence. Self-determined to the end though, Lawrence
rejects Sherif's offer of assistance and decides to locate the
Prince himself. Alone with only a compass and common-sense, Lawrence pilots himself
across the expanse and winds up stumbling across Col. Harry Brighton
(Anthony Quayle), his already in-situ superior. Sizing up his
charge, Brighton (a rigid and unbending military man in the best
British tradition) orders him to keep quiet and remember his
loyalties. Prince Feisel is a worried man though. The Turks have
already defeated and demoralised his men with their powerful guns,
now they bomb them from biplanes. Used to swords and hand-to-hand
combat, the Arab casualties are enormous. However, Lawrence just
can't contain himself and blurts out his personal opinions to Prince
Feisel, much to the discomfort of Brighton (who's advising a
retreat). To get his way, Lawrence pragmatically teams up
with Sherif Ali and promises a miracle. Now all they need to do is get 50
warriors across the fearsome Nefud desert and onto the Turkish held
port of Aqaba. The emotionally moving and visually stunning biopic of a man blinded
by his own ego and desire to be extraordinary, Lawrence of Arabia
succeeds on all levels. Working with epic themes of fate, loyalty,
diplomacy and war, David Lean weaves a complex tapestry of
diametrically opposed motives which leaves Lawrence as a dark, blank
shadow in the brightly-lit desert. Thoughts, dreams and needs remain
barely touched in a film which explores his status as a catalyst and
figurehead far more than the man himself. Thus the enigma of
Lawrence survives unbreached. The amazing thing is that even with
this largely successful attempt to distance the audience from the
film (apart from a few characters like Sherif), Lean still forces
you to care about Lawrence. No one wishes to end their time as a
pawn of powers beyond their control, be they of human or god-like
origin, yet the pain of betrayal wounds so much more deeply for
Lawrence. Having fought constantly to rise above the limits of
humanity, his destiny forced him to confront the desperate reality
of his efforts. This is the tragedy that emerges from Lawrence of
Arabia. O'Toole is central to Lawrence of Arabia through both his character
and his utterly convincing portrayal of the same. Incomprehensible
even to those who knew him personally, Lawrence here is a teetering
combination of keen intelligence, charisma and barely concealed
madness. Facets of all these qualities, and more, flash from
O'Toole's performance, showing how he could believe that uniting the
fractured Bedouin tribesmen was forever when it was over almost
before it began. As perhaps Lawrence's only friend, Sharif brings a
rare humanity to the film, indicating a deep understanding of both
the brutality of life and the need for compassion. Guinness is also
fine, if almost unrecognisable, as a proud monarch brought low by a
bleak future. In smaller roles, Anthony Quinn as Auda Abu Tayi, the
initially hostile leader of the Howeitat, is suspicious but ready to
be cajoled by a mad Englishman, while Jack Hawkins, as General
Allenby, recognises Lawrence's potential and ruthlessly uses it. In
the latter half of the film, Josi Ferrer pops up as Turkish
Bey, a torturer who releases Lawrence's demons, while Arthur Kennedy, as
reporter Jackson Bentley, does a magnificent job of creating his
wartime hero. Lawrence of Arabia should only be viewed on the big screen for one
simple reason; its breath-taking cinematography. More than just a
vehicle for the display of images, here the desert is shaped into an
object of desire, a force which is both unforgiving and romantic. In
a film without a single female speaking part, the desert is a
friend, a foe and the love interest. The visual impact of tortured
wind streaming across the baked sands, swirling and twisting over
the Sun's "anvil", cannot be described with words. In concert with
this, the brilliant score mixes rousing orchestral themes with
elements of Arabian sounding rhythms to haunting effect. However,
while Lawrence of Arabia feels like a lengthy and draining
experience, not a moment is wasted. The only weakness is that the
second half is slightly less impressive than that which has come
before, situated on a smaller scale with somewhat less focus.
Ultimately, Lawrence's attempt to create an Arab state is a lost
cause since the tribes unite only for pride, money and possessions,
rather than for history. Even his tremendous strategical skill, will-power and ability to assimilate the Arab culture is not enough to
bridge the inviolable barrier that exists between him and the men he
leads. This is why the ambivalent ending works. It doesn't determine
how you feel about Lawrence because there's no simple way to get to
grips with his complex and jelly-like personality."
from:
http://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/
Lawrence_Arabia.html
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Premise
book:
"This is the exciting and highly literate story of the real Lawrence
of Arabia, as written by Lawrence himself, who helped unify Arab
factions against the occupying Turkish army, circa World War I.
Lawrence has a novelist's eye for detail, a poet's command of the
language, an adventurer's heart, a soldier's great story, and his
memory and intellect are at least as good as all those. Lawrence
describes the famous guerrilla raids, and train bombings you know
from the movie, but also tells of the Arab people and politics with
great penetration. Moreover, he is witty, always aware of the
ethical tightrope that the English walked in the Middle East and
always willing to include himself in his own withering insight.
From the Publisher
The monumental work that assured T.E. Lawrence's place in history
as "Lawrence of Arabia." Not only a consummate military history, but
also a colorful epic and a lyrical exploration of the mind of a
great man who helped shape the Middle East as it exists today."
from:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
0385418957/103-1090448-1674248?v=glance
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Author:
"Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in
Tremadoc, Carnarvonshire, North Wales, as the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas
Chapman, seventh Baronet of Westmeath in Ireland. Since Lady Chapman
refused a divorce, he had left her, and set up a new home with Sarah
Junner, a woman who had been governess in his household. Sarah was
fifteen years his junior. Sir Thomas moved with her to a large semi-detached house in north Oxford, where they were known as Mr and Mrs
Lawrence. Outwardly they lived normal Victorian age life, but
actually with a sense of guilt. Lawrence was the third son of this
union. He learned the secret of his parents at the age of ten.
By the age of four, Lawrence started to read books and newspapers.
From his father, who lived as a gentleman of 'independent means', he
learned to love bicycling and photography. Lawrence was educated at
the Oxford High School. He won a Welsh scholarship to Jesus College,
Oxford, where he read modern history. In the summer of 1909 he
started alone a walking tour in Syria, Palestine, and parts of
Turkey. By September he had covered some 1,100 miles. During this
journey Lawrence visited 36 crusader castles, and made careful
notes. His thesis on 'The Influence of the Crusades on European
Military Architecture - to the End of the XIIth Century" gained him
a first-class honours degree in 1910. He was awarded a post-graduate
scholarship by Magdalen College, and appointed by the British museum
to an important archeological dig.
In 1911 Lawrence was in Syria and participated on an expedition
excavating the Hittite site of Carchemish on Euphrates. First he
worked under D.G. Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, and then,
from 1912, under Leonard Woolley. However, digging did not really
inspire him: "I am not going to put all my energies into rubbish
like writing history, or becoming an archeologist," he told his
mother. "I would much rather write a novel even, or become a
newspaper correspondent..." In Egypt he worked under Sir Flinders Petrie, and took part in a
survey in Palestine. In Carchemish he became a friend of the site's
14-year-old water boy, Dahoum and taught him to read and write and
dedicated him The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Their friendship raised
eyebrows, but Jeremy Wilson has stated in his authorized biography
of T. E. Lawrence (1990) that rumors of a physical relationship have
led many astray. During these years Lawrence acquired the
knowledge of the language and customs of the Arab people. After the outbreak
of World War I, he was assigned to intelligence as an expert on
Arab. In 1916 he joined the forces of the Arabian sheik Feisal al
Husayn. In The Seven Pillars Lawrence describes his first meeting
with Feisal: "I felt at first glance that this was the man I had
come to Arabia to seek - the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt
to full glory. Feisal looked very tall and pillar like, very
slender, in his long white silk robes and his brown
headcloth... His eyelids were dropped; and his black beard and colourless face were
like a mask against the strange, still watchfulness of his body."
Taking on Arab costume himself, he began to work with Feisal to
launch a fullscale revolt of the tribes. In 1916 he was captured
subjected to beatings and homosexual rape by the Turkish governor of
Deraa, ''an ardent paederast'' (Lawrence's own term). Though he
escaped, Lawrence was shattered by the experience. ''I gave away the
only possession we are born into the world with - our bodily
integrity,'' he later wrote. Lawrence's masochist tendencies became
much later public when a Sunday newspaper published an interview
with a former Tank Corps private who carried out ritual floggings,
at Lawrence's request, from 1925 to 1934. Professor
A.W. Lawrence, the youngest member of the family and his brother's literary
executor, confessed in an interview in 1986 that Lawrence hated the
thought of sex. "He had read any amount of medieval literature about
characters - some of them saints, some of them not - who had quelled
sexual longings by beatings. And that's what he did."
Brave beyond compare Lawrence soon became an influential figure in
the Arab forces. He formed an alliance with Auda abu
Tayi, leader of the Howeitat tribe, known for his courage and brutality. Especially
Lawrence's guerrilla warfare undermined successfully Germany's
Ottoman ally - they blew up sections of the vital Hejaz Railway and
raided Turkish positions. During the campaigns Lawrence was wounded
several times - he suffered from dozens of bullet and
shrapnel wounds. He took the port of Aqaba in July of 1917, without firing a
shot, and led his Arab forces into the desert, distracting the Turks
when the British army began its invasion of Palestine and Syria.
However, Lawrence's military victories were shadowed by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which promised Syria to the French and undermined
the idea of an Arab homeland in Syria. These years Lawrence later
described in his work The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. A new national
hero was born, when the American journalist Lowell Thomas gained
success with his lectures in London on Sir Edmund Allenby's invasion
of Syria and especially Lawrence's exploits with the Arabs.
After World War I Lawrence accompanied the Arab delegation to the
Peace Conference in Paris, first as Feisal's adjutant. He was a
research fellow at Oxford and served at the invitation of Winston
Churchill as a political adviser to the Middle East Department in
the Colonial Office (1921-22). Charles Doughty's classic account of
his 1876-78 travels in Arabia, Travels in Arabia
Deserta, was reissued in 1921 with an introduction by Lawrence; the book had
captured his imagination in 1911-12. Later he complained of
Doughty's "inhuman arrogance" and his "unshakeable conviction of his
own rightness". At the height of his fame, Lawrence resigned disgusted from his post
and enlisted the Royal Air Force under the name of John Hume Ross.
When his identity was discovered, he joined the Royal Tank Corps
under the name of Thomas Edward Shaw. In 1925 he returned to the Air
Force as Shaw, serving in England and in India for ten years. In
Afghanistan he worked in an engine repair depot. Supplementing his
meager income, Lawrence translated The Odyssey for an American
publisher and wrote a book about his experiences in the RAF. He left
the service in 1935 and moved to Moreton, Dorsetshire. There he
bought a little cottage named Clouds Hill. "I imagine leaves must
feel like this after they have fallen from their tree and until they
die", Lawrence wrote in a letter. In the last 12 years of his life, Lawrence owned seven motorcycles
manufactured by George Brough. They were the fastest in the U.K. On
May 13, 1935, Lawrence was in an accident near his home - he tried
to avoid two boys on bicycles, lost the control of his motorcycle
and slammed into the ground. He died at Bovington Camp Hospital
without regaining consciousness on May 19. "Many men would take the
death-sentence without a whimper," he had said, "to escape the life-sentence which fate carries in her other hand." Lawrence's monument
was later erected in the old Anglo-Saxon church of St. Martin at
Wareham in Dorset."
from:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/telawren.htm
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Director:
David Lean
Cast:
Peter O'Toole (T.E. Lawrence), Alec Guiness (Prince
Feisal), Anthony Quinn (Auda abu Tayi), Jack Hawkins (Gen. Lord Edmund
Allenby), Omar Sharif (Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish), Jose Ferrer
(Turkish Bey) and others.
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