AndrewLA

If I can tear this away from Gromit's trousers for a sec, I do think it makes quite a difference to how you look at LAWRENCE OF ARABIA if you don't know that he was part of World War One. The movie simply becomes a Boy's Own adventure -- more adult, wonderfully written and shot and acted, but not very deep. Just guys fighting in the desert.

But if you know that we were in a war with the Germans, and the Turks were allies of the Germans, and that Lawrence was authorized to promise independent kingdoms to the Arabs (kind of reduced to Feisel in the movie) as rewards for fighting the Turks, then the movie -- and the central character -- takes on an awesome historic sweep. The British and French essentially created the modern Middle East because of the commitments they made to the Arabs (and the Jews with the Balfour Declaration), commitments that could never be completely honored, and which led to disaster in later years. That's a context. Without it, LAWRENCE might as well be THE FLAME OF ARABY Part II with Jeff Chandler as T.E...

ChristineCB

Steve, wot nonsense. Well, unless it's a pointed stick.

But a bunch of bananas? Yes, I can see that. Sticks, even pointed ones, well, no - I've been told they're not so important.

I have always wondered what if a certain Norwegian Blue (a parrot infamously clever for playing dead, or being stunned) was grasping a pointed stick, however. Or maybe African swallows, with a coconut strung between them...

Steve Crook

Sounds like someone's been catching up on their Python

Steve

penfold

IIRC The Balfour declaration isn't mentioned in LoA but Picot-Sykes is...and I think rightly. The Balfour declaration indicated that the British Government were minded to support calls for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and with the proviso that the rights of the non-Jewish community were unaffected. In other words, not the current situation (by which I mean the situation post-1947) by a very long way. I doubt that under the circumstances of 1917 Feisal would have objected too strongly, if other promises had been kept.
Picot-Sykes is a very different kettle of fish indeed, slicing up regions for British and French control or influence, with Palestine an international mandate - rather like post-WW2 Germany and Austria (think The Third Man or Oh Rosalinda) which had been promised for an autonomous Arab homeland, mainly modern Syria. This was the betrayed promise in the film, with Sykes-Picot planning being represented by the ficticious Claude Rains character. Sykes-Picot was leaked to the Arabs in 1918 by Lenin post- Russian revolution
But you have to bear in mind the date of the film; in 1962 WW1 was as long ago as the film is to us know; people who fought in it as young men were approaching retirement age, not long dead; the filmmakers of 1962 would have assumed general background knowledge (ie, Russia, France, GB + Empire and later the US versus Germany, Austro-Hungary and Ottoman Empire) of WW1 in the same way that filmmakers now would assume basic knowledge of the Vietnam War.
Also I'm not sure (But would stand corrected) that in 1962 the Middle-East situation was as much of a hot topic; generally known or media-covered; as it would be in 1967 and since....1962 was Cold War and Cuba....we have the benefit of a further 44 years of hindsight.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Freddy

Those of us who were children in the fifties and sixties are, in a way, carrying our parents genes of a crucial time in British history. It was they who sat with us in the living room or cinema as we, through film, shared the experience their generation went through.
Lawrence is a wonderful sweep of a film but an important point to consider is at that time it could only be seen on the cinema, ( other 40s/50s war films might be on television) so the only way to learn more about any 'factual' film you had just watched would be through books or newspapers. It is far easier today to replay the video or dvd and believe what you are seeing has an historical accuracy.

As an aside, would I be correct in thinking LOA was one of the first British war films in colour?

regards

Freddy

penfold

Not really...there are a few from during WW2; Western Approaches for instance. Depending what you mean by War films, you could include This Happy Breed and Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and A Matter of Life and Death started filming in 1945...The Four Feathers was 1939...

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Nick Dando

I was surprised as to how inaccurate the film seemed in portraying events, based on my recent reading of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. After reading the book, I watched the film again, and very little seemed right. Certainly some of the characters were there, but they did things in the film that hadn't been mentioned in the book, or had been done by someone else.
The main criticism I've got is the huge inflation of the role played by Sherif Ali. In the book he is a very minor player and had hardly anything to do with Lawrence.
But all said, the film's a romance.

Nick

Freddy

Thanks very much for that Penfold, .

I think what confused me was out of the b/w war films of the 50s LOA in colour seemed to be at the forefront of a number of others such as Battle of Britain; Where Eagles Dare; 633 Squadron; Hannibal Brookes; and Zulu.

regards

Freddy

Steve Crook

Apart from the fact that they still taught History in the 1960s, the Middle-East would also have been in the news more with things like the Suez Crisis still fairly fresh (& painful) in the memory.

Steve

ChristineCB

I still prefer seeing LAWRENCE on the big-screen. "The only way to see it..."

penfold

True enough, but that was '56, and was hardly front page material by 1962...it was the '67 and '73 wars, and the upsurge in terrorist violence by the PLO and PFLP (Munich, Hijackings) that put it there....'62 wa all about Gary Powers, Cuba, the Cold War, the early Space Race...oh, and The Beatles, a popular singing group...

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Hackett

How times change. In 1962 when the film was made the controversy over the story was not about who buggered up the Middle East but was or was not Lawrence buggered by the Turks. Now if it was being remade today what slant would you think the tale would take?.

Steve Crook

Well the potential end of civilisation via the Cuban Missile Crisis was considered to be fairly important :blink:

But this was back in the days when people could remember more than 5 minutes into the past so although Suez and the Middle East might not have been front page news, I doubt that there were many people that saw the film on first release that didn't have a good idea of the background.

Of course I'm only talking about British people here. I'll refrain from mentioning the teaching of Geography & History in certain other parts of the world :

No, don't remind me. I think I've heard of them

Steve

DeeDee

Has anyone ever seen the 1990 film A Dangerous Man: Lawrence after Arabia, with Ralph Fiennes in the role of Lawrence? I thought it was excellent, though not a well known film.

DeeDee