ARTICLE: Lawrence of Arabia on Film

David Lean, director of Lawrence of Arabia, was born in 1908, in Croydon. How did a man who grew up with a vista of what now rates as one the grimmest places in Britain, end up producing one of the most stunning motion pictures ever made? He spent a fair bit of his adolescence hiding at Victoria Station to avoid going back there, to his sad mother and his broken home. He started out as an avid photographer, and then managed to get a very entry-level job at a film company. From there, he worked his way up through the cutting room, from editing newsreels to quota quickies, short films churned out to keep pace with government requirements for homegrown film ratios. By the 1930s, his editing credits included films featuring Olivier and Leslie Howard. Michael Powell once said of him that he was the absolute best in the game. In his autobiography he wrote: ‘I began to dread Lean zoning in on me with a list of questions in his hand, he dived into that sea of film like Johnny Weissmuller into a sea of crocodiles.’

Anthony Quayle as Harry Brighton, Omar Sharif as Sharif Ali and Peter O’Toole as Lawrence (Horizon Pictures/Columbia Pictures)

A consummate womaniser who was married six times and once told Alec Guinness at a Downing Street get together that he had the horn for Maggie Thatcher, in 1942 he directed his first film with Noel Coward; the wartime propaganda starring the latter: In Which We Serve. The two collaborated again in 1945 on Blithe Spirit, about which Coward said: ‘You’ve just fucked up the best thing I ever wrote.’ That only ranks as his second best Lean-related quote, as you’ll see. Then, Lean’s career gained steam. Brief Encounter came in 1945, Great Expectations in 1946 and Oliver Twist in 1948. His last truly British films was Hobson’s Choice in 1954, and then, he really hit the big time. Bridge on the River Kwai came in 1957, then Lawrence in 1962, again with Alec Guinness.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be old enough to remember it, or you managed to catch it in all its glory on one of the occasions when it has returned restored to cinemas. Because you have to see it on the big screen to get the full effect. In 1963 it won seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. It’s long, clocking in at nearly four hours. David Selznick, who had been urged stringently to get the length of Gone with the Wind down some 25 years before, saw the premiere and pleaded with Lean not to cut it.

Broadly speaking, he didn’t. One example of something he did not butcher was the iconic scene at the beginning of the film with the match. Lean himself said:

‘I find the map room a goodish scene in a goodish British film. I would, without a second thought, dispense with it but for the match incident. I am not absolutely convinced that the match incident is worth the footage involved.’

Certain other directors disagree. What follows, when O’Toole blows out the flame and the sun rises over the desert and explodes across the screen; that is what Steven Spielberg says made him want to make films.