Lawrence of Arabia 1962

The Film:

Camels and sand. And Khaki (again - what is it with David Lean and Khaki?). And Arab uprisings. And Omar Sharif appearing on the horizon. And beautiful shots of deserts and sunrises. And absolutely no women. And it goes on for hours and hours. And there's lots of camels and sand.

That's my review of Lawrence of Arabia before watching it this time. I've seen clips, I've read stuff. I've really not been looking forward to watching this one - in my head it's basically three and a half hours of camels and sand.

And yet it's very highly rated on IMDB, and one of my favourite people (who I share an office with, and who has to listen to my ramblings about the Oscars on a regular basis) thinks it's a wonderful film.

We're about to give up three and a half hours of our Saturday to this - I really, really want to be proved wrong!

The Ceremony:

I've been waiting for this one - one of the most notorious Oscar ceremonies ever, for the most fabulous of reasons! But lets get the stats out of the way first.

Santa Monica, April 8th 1963, hosted by Frank Sinatra (unfortunately - imagine what fun Bob Hope would have had with all the shenanigans!). Nothing else really significant to report except......

Hagtacular Bette!

This was the year that Bette Davis hoped to secure her third Oscar (having been nominated a record - pre Meryl Streep! - tenth time. However, her co-star in the gloriously over-the-top "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" (one-time winner Joan Crawford) was not nominated. The two were already notoriously at loggerheads, and had been throughout filming. This only served to fan the flames. Crawford went up a few gears into super-bitch mode and - so the story goes - targetted Bette's rivals for the award. She offered some of them the favour of acting as their proxy - going up to collect their award in their absence. One of the nominees who accepted Joan's kind offer was Anne Bancroft, who was appearing on Broadway at the time and wouldn't be able to attend the ceremony. And guess who won?

Joan Crawford clutched that Oscar all night, as if her life depended on it. In all the photos (such as the one below) you would be forgiven for thinking that she was the winner. And if you want to know what happened next, I recommend HBO's "Feud: Bette and Joan" which recreates the ceremony really well in Episode 5 (of 8!). I'm Team Bette all the way, but I have to admit Joan played a blinder here!

Other Notable Winners That Night:

Spot the person who didn't actually win an Oscar that year -
doesn't she look proud of herself!

Peter O'Toole quite famously never won Best Actor, despite being nominated eight times. This was his first and, arguably, his best shot. However, he was up against a great literary hero being played by an actor being nominated for the fifth time. He didn't really stand a chance against Gregory Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch.

The aforementioned Anne Bancroft won Best Actress for playing Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker and Patty Duke took the supporting Oscar for playing Helen Keller in the same film. Aged 16, Duke was the youngest winner (at that time) of a competitive Oscar. However, she wasn't the youngest nominee that year. Mary Badham was nominated in the same category for playing Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. She was 10. 

The other actor on the photo is Ed Begley who won for Sweet Bird Of Youth. My generation are more familiar with his son (Jnr) who was one of the stars of St Elsewhere (among lots of other things!)

Best Song:

The theme song from Days of Wine and Roses, a film about an alcoholic couple (played by nominees Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon). This was the only Oscar it received, from five nominations:

What We Could/Should Have Been Watching:

Fatherly advice - "stay away from camels, the desert is even hotter than
Maycomb county, and very very dry!"

I suppose I can't really argue objectively against "one of the greatest films of all time" - and, yes, there is so much that is spectacular about Lawrence of Arabia. However, the other nominees deserve mention. There's The Longest Day (John Wayne and the D-Day landings), The Music Man (great musical with the fabulous Robert Preston) and Mutiny on the Bounty (the first big remake, with Marlon Brando). And then there's To Kill A Mockingbird. The film was released within two years of Harper Lee's book being published. The book itself has been on every list going (including the list of GCSE recommended texts, until Gove decided it was too modern and not British!) and the film still features high on lots of lists of great American cinema. I would always rather watch a film with great characters than great sunsets, and I really love this one. My Oscar vote would have gone to the Finches!


Our Verdict:

Really clever editing

LofA (for brevity's sake!) won 7 Oscars. When you look at what they were for, it's very difficult to begrudge most of them.

Best Editing - absolutely, the editing is superb. Not just the famous cut from Lawrence's match to the flaming sun, but throughout the film (although I would have edited out at least an hour - I'm going to blame that on Direction....)

Best Art Direction - very much so. So much of the film (particularly the first half) presents as if it were a painted picture. Can't argue with that one.

Best Sound - considering the conditions/locations in which the film was shot, the sound is excellent.

Masterful cinematography

Best Score - for Maurice Jarre. I'm fine with that. The music is iconic and sets the scene really well.

Best Cinematography - for great British cinematography legend Freddie Young. The most deserved of all the awards. It is an extraordinary example of the art and craft of actually filming something. Young perfected several techniques on this film and invented a few others. This, by far, is my favourite thing about LofA. The cinematography is amazing!!!

And then I get a bit unsure. Best Director and Best Picture. Objectively I really can't begrudge either of these awards (apart from still wondering why David Lean found it impossible to make a reasonably-lengthed film!).

Even greater, extraordinary cinematography

However, try as I might, I still don't really like this film. And I still just want to sum it up as "camels and sand". I was intrigued, surprised and hopeful for at least an hour and a half. I really loved the journey to Cairo (always from left to right across the screen). I was starting to warm to our decidedly dodgy leading character (who is played superbly by Peter O'Toole!) and I was enthralled by the spectacle I was witnessing. I even started to care about what happened to our intrepid travellers. I recommend the first 90 minutes of the film to anyone who wants to marvel at the craft of film-making whilst still enjoying the results.

Then they arrived at Cairo. And I got bored, and started to text emojis of camels to my aforementioned co-worker. By the time anyone had done anything remotely interesting, Mark and I had decided (via text) to set up a camel-based taxi service called "Camels R Us" - and that's the most interesting thing that happened for the rest of the film. This was the point at which I was expecting some action, some big crowd scenes, some jeopardy and some sort of resolution. I suppose, technically, all these things happened. However - apart from the aftermath of the train derailment (which revealed more about Lawrence's character than the preceding hour or the rest of the film) I was left cold.

....and some reasonable attempts at characterisation.

I'm clearly missing something that so many people get. But I don't get it. It was a political story - so maybe I wanted more political intrigue. It was a war story - so maybe I wanted more fighting. It had elements of a buddy movie, with the journey etc. - so maybe I wanted more of that. Or maybe, ultimately, the character of T E Lawrence just leaves me cold (however superbly he was played). It almost certainly deserved the Best Picture award, but I didn't really like it (sorry Mark) and I don't think I'll watch it again.