Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, José Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Wolfit, I.S. Johar, Gamil Ratib, Michel Ray, John Dimech, Zia Mohyeddin
The story of British officer T.E. Lawrence's mission to aid the Arab tribes in their revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Lawrence becomes a flamboyant, messianic figure in the cause of Arab unity but his psychological instability threatens to undermine his achievements.
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 origin...
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 ...
This has got to be in my top ten movies - it is an almost flawless exercise in marrying fantastic photography, casting, writing, costumes and a score into three hours of wonderful entertainment. Rumour has it that Albert Finney was offered the lead role and suggested Peter O'Toole instead. If that is true (or not) then clearly serendipity was already on hand to guide this rendition of the story of...