Superb

Rating: 10/10 (24 April 2020)

TE Lawrence is seconded to sound out Arab tribes under Turkish occupation. He oversteps his brief and forges relationships with both assorted prominent individuals and also the desert in which they live. He takes a prominent role in the uprising against the Ottomans, but at what personal cos?
David Lean's 1962 3 hour plus desert epic won 7 Oscars including best film and best director. It deserved to. I won't list everything about it which merits mention, but here are some of the main ones.
Peter O'Toole, at the start of his career, holds the screen effortlessly as Lawrence. By turn drive, haunted, trivial, it is a mesmerising portrait of a complex man. The rest of the cast is also excellent.
The script, by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, never reverts to flamboyance, but instead delivers exposition with such economy that you are never aware of it. This is film writing at its best.
Maurice Jarre's iconic there is merely the icing on the cake that is the score.
And the look of the film! Putting to one side - as if the can! - the sheer scale of the film, the logistics of getting film crew, cast and extras to locations where those extraordinary vistas could be captured, you are then almost forced to notice the beauty of the jil. Lean's directiom and Freddie Francis' cinematoraphy mean that each frame is a work of art, shocking in its beauty.
A true classic whose reputation is entirely justified.