An essential. The title of this blog, ‘Dogs Bark . . .‘ comes from one of British director David Lean’s (Brief Encounter) favorite quotes, ‘Dogs bark . . . when the elephant passes,’ an old Indian proverb meaning: Don’t let the bastards wear you down. I chose it because he was talking about the critics who increasingly barked at his films late in his career. Despite this, in 1963 when he made Lawrence Of Arabia, Lean was at the top of his game. The dogs were silent and he won the Best Director Oscar. The film was also Best Picture that year
In 1963, I saw the movie in a San Francisco 70-mm theater, like I just saw it at The Loft, a Tucson art house. It’s fascinating to see all the current Arabian problems predicted by a man who never finished his university program. The film ends with the Sykes-Picot Agreement in which Britain and France divided the spoils of the Ottoman Empire. The British took control of Iraq, the French, Syria, although these countries did not exist, as such, at the time and perhaps still don’t. T.E. Lawrence was the first in a long line of Westerners who only thought they understood the Bedouin.
However, geopolitics is only a plot device in Lawrence Of Arabia. It’s the Lawrence part that Lean tries to explain. T.E. was quite possibly as enigmatic as Lean and Peter O’Toole (Becket) imagined him and the queer shadows in the film are also possible. Mostly though, the question of destiny arises -- right young man in the right historical place issues - - and the tactical/political usefulness of masochistic madness. The brilliantly cast authority figures (Jack Hawkins and Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai) are quite clear about this. Particularly nuanced is Claude Rains (The Invisible Man) as Dryden, a compilation of several historical diplomats of the time. This is clearly an older version of Casablanca’s Captain Renault but even more cynically manipulative.
The editing (Anne Coates, The Elephant Man), sound (John Cox, The Third Man), art direction (John Box, Oliver!) and camera work (Freddie Young and Nicholas Roag, Dr. Zhivago) all won Oscars. The pictures are why you want to see this in a theater at 70 mm and when they mate in modern Dolby sound with Maurice Jarre’s (Dr. Zhivago) spectacular score . . . the results are breathtaking.
I saw Lawrence Of Arabia for the second time during my freshman year of college and it inspired a desire to either lead an Arab revolt or take a degree in film, neither of which happened. My destiny lay in another direction; however, my love of movies went from the visceral to the intellectual thanks to that reprise. It's apropos that the name of my blog credits Lean. Destiny comes like a desert wind at night. Sometimes it sweeps you up, sometimes it buries you and sometimes it just blows on by.