Lawrence of Arabia
Released 1962
StarsPeter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif,
José Ferrer, Anthony Quayle Directed by David Lean
- "Lawrence of Arabia" is not a simple biography or an adventure movie -
although it contains both elements - but a movie that uses the desert as a stage for the
flamboyance of a driven, quirky man. Although it is true that Lawrence was instrumental in
enlisting the desert tribes on the British side in the 1914-17 campaign against the Turks,
the movie suggests that he acted less out of patriotism than out of a need to reject
conventional British society and identify with the wildness of the Arabs.
- T.E. Lawrence must be the strangest hero to ever stand at the center of an epic. To play
him, Lean cast one of the strangest actors in recent movie history, Peter O'Toole, a
lanky, almost clumsy man with a sculptured face and a speaking manner that hesitates
between amusement and insolence. O'Toole's assignment was a delicate one. Although it was
widely believed that Lawrence was a homosexual, a multimillion-dollar epic filmed in 1962
could not possibly be frank about that. And yet Lean and his writer, Robert Bolt, didn't
simply cave in and rewrite Lawrence into a routine action hero. Using O'Toole's peculiar
speech and manner as their instrument, they created a character who combined charisma and
craziness, who was so different from conventional military heroes that he could inspire
the Arabs to follow him in that mad march across the desert.
Summary by Roger Ebert