“As long as ever and never better. . . . The film’s genius is its marriage of intimate portrait and big-screen epic. . . . Lawrence is spectacular” (Rita Kempley, Washington Post). Films released the same year as Lawrence of Arabia stood little chance of getting the Academy’s attention. Lean’s sprawling classic swept the 1963 Awards, winning Best Picture and Director in addition to five other Oscars. Based on accounts of British officer T.E. Lawrence’s efforts to unify various desert tribes against the Ottoman Turks during World War One, Lawrence is as big as larger-than-life cinema gets. Lean’s love affair with the vast, shimmering desert is exquisitely rendered by Freddie Young’s magnificent 70mm cinematography (and, needless to say, does not at all translate onto a small screen); Maurice Jarre’s score is unforgettable; and a host of iconic – and all-male – actors (Alec Guinness, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, Claude Rains, and of course O’Toole as the amorphous, cerulean-eyed Lawrence) ensures never an underwhelming moment in this myth-making piece of film history. “Remains one of the most intelligent, handsome, and influential of all war epics” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader).

Rated PG. Mature Theme.

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