Lawrence of Arabia

This is obviously an epic film, lasting nearly four hours with the wide, sweeping desert vistas and huge cast. It describes a fairly brief period of time out of a remarkable man’s life. I wonder how modern viewers handle the length of the movie, accustomed as they are to movies this lengthy featuring superheroes with humor and almost constant action. I don’t even remember how long ago I originally watched Lawrence of Arabia —quite possibly forty or more years ago. It has aged pretty well overall. The only negative thing that struck me when I recently re-watched it may well be due to my age. But it can be a talkative film at times, which is fine, but they sometimes talk fairly softly, and if such a scene transitions to music, I found the music to be so loud in comparison that it lifted me half of my chair. I had to have remote in hand to be ready to adjust the volume. A minor thing.

227 minutes of greatness! I've always wanted to watch <em>'Lawrence of Arabia'</em> given its standing as being one of the greats, though that rather long run time always put it on my subconscious back-burner. At last, I rooted out some time for it and man it was a well spent near four hours! I'm not going to say its length is ignorable, though it truly doesn't feel like a 3hr 47min movie - so every credit to all involved. Peter O'Toole's performance is undoubtedly outstanding, I can't really add anything more to what I'm sure many, many others have noted down the decades - he is, put simply, brilliant. Other strong performers are Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif and, albeit more minorly, Claude Rains. No-one on the cast puts a foot wrong, as expected. The cinematography throughout is also absolutely exquisite, the entire look and feel of the film is just stunning. There is much more to say about this but I'll leave that to those that have already said such things. I'm just here to watch great movies and this 1962 picture is unequivocally one of those. Quite evidently a classic, no doubt about it.