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Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif Director: David Lean
Director David Lean follows the heroic true-life odyssey of
T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) in this dramatic portrait of the famed British officer's journey to the Middle East. Assigned to Arabia during World War I, Lawrence courageously unites the warring Arab factions into a strong guerrilla front and leads them to brilliant victories in treacherous desert battlefields where they eventually defeat the ruling Turkish Empire.
There's no getting around a simple, basic truth: watching Lawrence of Arabia in any home-video format represents a compromise.
There's no better way to appreciate this epic biographical adventure than to see it projected in 70 millimeter onto a huge theater screen.
That caveat aside, David Lean's masterful "desert classic" is still enjoyable on the small screen, especially if viewed in widescreen format.
(If your only option is to view a "pan & scan" version, it's best not to bother; this is a film for which the widescreen format is utterly mandatory.)
Peter O'Toole gives a star-making performance as T.E. Lawrence, the eccentric British officer who united the desert tribes of Arabia against the Turks during World War I.
Lean orchestrates sweeping battle sequences and breathtaking action, but the film is really about the adventures and trials that transform Lawrence into a legendary man of the desert.
Lean traces this transformation on a vast canvas of awesome physicality; no other movie has captured the expanse of the desert with such scope and grandeur.
Equally important is the psychology of Lawrence, who remains an enigma even as we grasp his identification with the desert.
Perhaps the greatest triumph of this landmark film is that Lean has conveyed the romance, danger, and allure of the desert with such physical and emotional power.
It's a film about a man who leads one life but is irresistibly drawn to another, where his greatness and mystery are allowed to flourish in equal measure.
Additional features
This vast movie is spread leisurely across two discs, with Maurice Jarre's overture standing in as intermission music for the first track of the second disc. But the clarity of the anamorphic widescreen picture and Dolby 5.1 soundtrack justify the decision not to cram the whole thing onto one side of a disc.
The movie has never looked nor sounded better: the desert landscapes are incredibly detailed, with the tiny nomadic figures in the far distance clearly visible on the small screen; the remastered soundtrack, too, is a joy.
Thanks are due to Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, who supervised (and financed) the restoration of the picture in 1989; on the second disc Spielberg chats about why David Lean is his favorite director and why Lawrence had such a profound influence on him both as a child and as a filmmaker (he says he rewatches the movie before starting any new project).
Other features include an excellent and exhaustive "making of" documentary with contributions from surviving cast and crew (an avuncular Omar Sharif is particularly entertaining as he reminisces about meeting the hawk-like Lean for the first time), some contemporary featurettes designed to promote the movie, and a DVD-ROM facility.
The extra features, especially the documentary, are good, but the breathtaking quality of both anamorphic picture and digital sound is what makes this DVD package a triumph.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Encoding: Region 1 (US and Canada only) PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement
(RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on
RCE, click here.
Format: Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby
Studio: Columbia Tri-Star
DVD Features:
Theatrical trailer(s)
Two disc set
Four original featurettes: "Wind, Sand and Star: The Making of a Classic,"
"Maan, Jordan: The Camels Are Cast," "In Search of Lawrence" and "Romance of Arabia"
Exclusive Documentary: "The Making of Lawrence of Arabia"
A Conversation with Steven Spielberg
Original Newsreel Footage of the New York Premiere
Advertising Campaigns
Talent Files
DVD ROM ELEMENTS INCLUDE: Journey with Lawrence: Map of Arabia & Military Strategy and Archives of Arabia: Historic Photographs
Reproduction of the 1962 Souvenir Booklet
Widescreen anamorphic format
Number of discs: 2
Other Formats: VHS, DVD
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