Video review: "Lawrence of Arabia: 50th Anniversary Edition"

“Nothing is written,” T.E. Lawrence famously says. But almost from the moment “Lawrence of Arabia” hit theaters in 1962, it seemed destined to become one of the most iconic films ever made.

It is by most reckonings the pinnacle of the epic movie-making impulse that surged in the 1950s and ‘60s – a grand, lush drama filled with exotic foreign trappings and a history-making tale to tell. It won a slew of awards, including the Best Picture Oscar, and deserved them all.

A restoration of director David Lean’s masterpiece was released in theaters in 1989 – one of the last films distributed in a 70mm print. Now, a new digital remastering from the original film negative has been completed for the movie’s 50th anniversary. After a brief theatrical run, it debuts in two Blu-ray collections.

The story is familiar to any serious film-lover: an oddball British lieutenant (Peter O’Toole) is plucked from obscurity during World War I to act as liaison to the disparate Arabic desert tribes, and ends up forging them into a united army that helps take down the Turkish Empire. As he becomes a famous and charismatic figure, Lawrence finds his sanity crumbling as his lust for power grows.

“Lawrence” has seen a number of video editions, but this represents its first time on Blu-ray. For comparison, I popped in my copy of the film from its 2001 DVD edition and then watched the same scenes on the new Blu-ray. The gap between the two was simply astonishing.

Of course, the image was much crisper and cleaner in the higher-resolution Blu-ray based on Sony’s 4K remastering. But what really struck me were the colors, which were dazzlingly vibrant in the new edition.
If you thought the golden sands and aching blue skies of the desert looked good before, you won’t believe how much they leap off the screen of the Blu-ray. When Lawrence first dons his white Arabic robes, it seemed like O’Toole was standing right before me.

Of course, it comes with a host of extra features – some seen before in previous editions, and some all-new. The highlight is a new graphic-in-picture track that allows the viewer to learn about the customs and rituals of the desert tribes. There is also a featurette featuring O’Toole looking back on the film, newsreel footage of its New York premiere, and more.

The 50th Anniversary Edition is available as either a two-disc version or the four-disc Gift Set. Opt for the latter, and you’ll receive several more featurettes, a never-before-seen deleted scene and conversations with Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.

The Gift Set also comes with a handsome 88-page coffee table book, a CD of Maurice Jarre’s unforgettable musical score (including previously unreleased tracks) and an authentic 70mm film frame (newly printed and numbered).

“Lawrence of Arabia” has never looked so good.

Movie: 4 stars out of four
Extras: 4 stars

Reeling Backward: "Ship of Fools" (1965)

There's a lot of stuff to like about 1965's "Ship of Fools" -- aptly described as "Grand Hotel on a boat." But overall it's a heavy-handed bit of social commentary along the lines of "On the Beach," which was recently featured in the Reeling Backward column.

That's no surprise, since both films were directed by Stanley Kramer. Kramer had a long and illustrious career as a producer and director, and often gravitated to material with a social conscious. Often the results were sublime ("Guess Who's Coming To Dinner," "Judgment at Nuremberg") but sometimes it feels like a big lecture.

The cast of "Ship" is huge -- Lee Marvin, Janet Leigh (in her final film role), Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer, Oskar Werner, George Segal, Heinz Ruhmann, Michael Dunn, Jose Greco, and on and on.

It's all one big circus of human frailties and prejudices. It's set aboard a German ocean liner in 1933, just when Nazism is on the rise. Virtually every Western society is represented, and almost always in a negative light.

The only truly good characters are the outcasts: The Jew and the dwarf. They sit together at their own dining table, even though the rest of the German passengers get a seat at the captain's table.

Dunn, who was one of the first Little Persons to have a serious dramatic film career, even takes on the role of the narrator who addresses the audience directly at the beginning and end -- not so subtly indicting those watching the movie for having the same flaws as the poor creatures they just watched.

Leigh is great as Mrs. Treadwell, an aging divorcee whose bitterness about the tatters of her own hopes and dreams seems to infect all of her interactions.

Marvin has an awful role as a racist American Southerner and ex-baseball player whose biggest problem in life was that he couldn't hit the outside curve ball. He spends most of the movie tomcatting after this feminine object or that. He's depicted, quite explicitly, as an ape.

I could spend a lot of time describing the rest of the characters, but I think you get the idea.

The centerpiece of the film is the plight of the ship's Dr. Schumann. Disaffected and estranged from his family on shore, he falls for a rich Mexican woman whose paramour has been deposed. Because of her habit of aiding the poor and needy, she's being deported to Spain, a country she's never been to.

A high-class drug addict, she gloms onto Shumann for her fix, but they soon recognize the same world-weary resignation in each other. Their romance is doomed from the start, and they both know it, but they can't help stirring the embers of their youthful passions.

I also liked Jose Ferrer in this film -- but then, it is virtually impossible not to like Jose Ferrer in anything. He plays a rich industrialist and early proponent of eugenics and Nazism. A raconteur who enjoys shunning those who do not live up to his definition of proper Germans, he spends most of his time chasing a nubile blonde German half his age. There's no meanness to the performance, though, but rather the wayward pride of a man who has confused patriotism with elitism.

There's a lot to take in with "Ship of Fools." But its high-mindedness gets the better of it.

2 stars out of four