Lawrence of Arabia Review

Freddie Young's Super Panavision photography is the most complete argument ever made for large-format cinema. The match cut from a blown-out match to a sunrise over dunes is the famous one, but the entrance of Sherif Ali is the greater achievement: a shimmer on the horizon resolving into a rider over several minutes on a long lens, with the audience given nothing to do but wait and watch heat distort the frame. Lean uses scale to isolate rather than impress, so Aqaba and the Nefud crossing register as endurance tests rather than set pieces.

Peter O'Toole, in his first lead, plays Lawrence as a man performing versions of himself until one of them turns cruel, and the shift after Deraa is genuinely disturbing. Maurice Jarre's score supplies the romanticism the script keeps withdrawing. Against all this, the post-intermission politics sprawl, the Damascus material loses narrative pressure, and the casting of Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal has aged into an obstacle. Two hundred and eighteen minutes are not all equally earned.