Lawrence of Arabia November 27, 2006

Directed by David Lean
UK 1962, 35mm, color, 220 min.
With Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif

David Lean's Academy Award-wining masterpiece follows the larger-than-life British polymath T.E. Lawrence (O’Toole), who led the disparate Arab nation to battle against Turkey during WWI. Produced during the waning years of the Classical Hollywood studio system, the film stands as both the finest example of the studio-era Hollywood epic as well as its swan song. Most impressive of all (perhaps even more so than the gargantuan scale of the film) is Lean and O’Toole’s refusal to pander to the allure of hagiography; Lawrence emerges not as a superheroic ubermensch, but rather as a series of contradictions—sensitive sadist, humanitarian exploiter, frail giant—which complicate the usually black and white moral atmosphere of the epic.

Official Website: http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2006fall/melodrama.html#lawrence