“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).
It's so interesting to me to think that Alec Guinness was largely thought of as a comedic actor in his early prime. My regard for him is based on his iconic dramatic roles in "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Star Wars." His first credited screen roles were in adaptations of "Oliver Twist" and "Great Expectations," but he gained his fame as the star of Ealing Studios comedies like "The Lavender Hill Mob," "Kings and Coronets" and "The Ladykillers."
When I set aside my bias, his proclivity to merrymaking is understandable. Guinness had a thin, good-looking face with a slightly rubbery quality. It's a common trait of comic leading men, to have features that are generally classically handsome but seem slightly sabotoged -- a googly eye here or a schnoz a bit too long there. Steve Carell and Leslie Nielsen are good examples. Guinness' sharp bird nose and watery eyes helped him play characters who were misfits on the margins of society. He made for a kindly but stubborn rebel.
"The Man in the White Suit" is a comedy, but with a strong socio-political message. Guinness plays Sidney Stratton, a brilliant chemist working as a janitor in a textile plant who discovers a fiber that is virtually indestructible and never gets dirty. Even oil and grease wipe off like magic.
The first half of the movie is fairly conventional, and not all that interesting. Sidney attempts to complete his experiment successfully, which is hard considering he's doing most of his work on the sly. He's thrown out of the plant owned by a young up-and-comer named Corland. He's played by Michael Gough, best known to modern audiences as Alfred in the original "Batman" movies of the 1980s and '90s. His physical appearance remained remarkably unchanged over the intervening decades, and even he even wore similar eyeglasses in both roles.
The result of all the typical laboratory scenes of bubbling tubes and random explosions is the titular white suit, which turns out to be just as impervious as advertised. It even glows in the dark, the only downside of its miraculous construction being that you can't dye it.
Birnley (Cecil Parker), a wealthy cloth magnate, intends to make a killing selling the stuff exclusively. But soon, wiser minds -- or at least more cold-bloodedly rational ones -- prevail. A bunch of other industry titans converge on Birnley's factory and convince him it would be disastrous. They're led by Sir John Kierlaw (Ernest Thesiger), an ancient capitalist who leers like a bird of prey, wrapped in layers of robes that frame his head like a mantle, and coughing spasmodically. He's literally as rotten on the inside as the out.
The big twist is that the unionized workers, who had initially embraced Sidney as one of their fellows who made good, also come to oppose the miracle cloth. Like the owners, they realize that they would essentially be manufacturing the means of their own obsolescence. Yes, the new clothes would sell like hotcakes -- once. Since they never need washing or replacement, once everyone in the world had the clothes they required, there would never be a need to make more.
I rather liked Vida Hope as Bertha, a tough worker gal who takes a shine to Sidney. She has blunt features and even blunter manners, but in her few scenes we sense a loneliness behind the bluster. It's clearly implied that she's attracted to Sidney, and he's so clueless he doesn't even notice. He's crushed when Bertha reveals that she and the other union members want to suppress his invention, too.
I was much less enamored with the female lead, Birnley's daughter Daphne, played by Joan Greenwood. She speaks in these long drawn-out vowels and intonations of upper-crust Britain that frankly are grating. Imagine Kate Hepburn playing a spoiled rich brat, and about two octaves lower. Daphne is a clever girl with strong streaks of both morality and opportunism. She agrees to take a payoff from Kierlaw to use her womanly charms to entice Sidney into dropping the whole matter, but is thrilled when he resists her advances.
The last act is a farcical affair with lots of chases and slamming doors. The big reveal at the end is that Sidney's invention was a fluke, and the white suit falls to pieces the moment his pursuers lay hands on him. He walks off into the sunset, assured that he'll find the solution to the problem.
I enjoyed "The Man in the White Suit," even as I recognized its many limitations. The common Ealing theme of one man (or a few) up against the establishment is so familiar that we more or less known in advance how things are going to play out, so there are few surprises. But Guinness is charming as the brilliant but socially inept inventor, who dares to invent something entirely new out of whole cloth.
The two gold bouillon thieves in "The Lavender Hill Mob" are criminal novices -- a workaday salaryman and a manufacturer of cheap souvenirs. That's how they manage to pull off the perfect crime -- by combining their unique set of skills and circumstances with the appearance of being the unlikeliest of suspects.
Alas, as rookies they manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, leading to their eventual capture.
The trouble for Henry "Dutch" Holland (Alec Guinness) and Alfred Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) arrives after they've gotten off scott-free, having successfully smuggled a million English pounds worth of gold across the Chanel, melted down into the form of Eiffel Tower souvenirs.
While preparing to unload the goods, they spot a group of British schoolgirls who have inadvertently bought the little gold towers after the shopkeeper carelessly opened the wrong box.
Now, if Holland and Pendlebury had kept their wits about them, they would have let the girls go and chocked the loss of 30,000 pounds or so as an acceptable loss. Instead, they go into a frenzy of activity, convinced the towers must be reclaimed or else they'll be found out.
They chase the girls all over Paris and then London, drawing attention to themselves in a way that simply letting those six souvenirs gather dust on a shelf somewhere never would have.
Of course, screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke sets up an impossible chain of events, in which one of the girls intended to give her Eiffel Tower to her policeman friend, and it just so happened that the detective on the gold case was standing right there when she gave it over, and he had a handy-dandy chemical test ready to prove it was gold, etc. It's a pretty tall Jenga tower of unlikely events. Anyway, Holland and Pendlebury could've just hopped a flight to South America directly from Paris.
"Lavender" is an enjoyable caper, even if one does mind the contortions of the plot. Director Charles Crichton keeps things moving at a brisk pace -- even at a mere 81 minutes, the movie never seems like it's in a hurry.
The main appeal of the film is that Holland and Pendlebury are regular Englishmen who probably never would've thought of committing the heist of the century if they had never met. Pendlebury moves into Holland's boarding house, and after Holland learns his new friend has a foundry at his warehouse, it gives him an idea.
Holland has spent the last 20 years supervising the transfer of gold bouillon from foundry to bank every day, earning a reputation as a meticulous and scrupulously honest employee. Ironically, even though he's directly responsible for a tremendous amount of his company's wealth, Holland is dismissed by his supervisors as an unimaginative drone, and his tiny paycheck reflects their disdain.
The real joy of the movie is less about the caper than these two invisible men discovering the thrills of attempting something extraordinary -- even if it is felonious.
The film ends with Pendlebury captured by the police and Holland having made his escape to Rio de Janeiro and setting himself up as a wealthy playboy. It's all a ruse, though, since he only escaped with the six gold souvenirs, which funded one year of "a life to which I had been unaccustomed."
A young Audrey Hepburn can be glimpsed giving Holland a kiss at the beginning; even screen legends got their start playing nightclub girls, hotel receptionists and Frieda the cigarette girl.
When you are a film critic, the one question you dread getting in social situations is, "So what's your favorite movie?"
People are invariably disappointed when I give vague, wishy-washy answers like, "Well, I love so many!" or "It's just impossible to choose." I suspect that chefs can readily tell you their favorite dish, and sports columnists don't hesitate to name the athlete they most admire. People don't like it when those who are supposed to be experts fudge on a pretty fundamental question.
The truth is my tastes have evolved over time. If you'd asked me the "favorite film" question when I was 14 or 15, I think I would have said "Blade Runner" without much pause. That one's still near the top of my list, although the themes of alienation and dehumanization that seem so important when you're a teen are less forceful now.
But I think I can say that however my list of favorites has shuffled over the years, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" has consistently remained very high. At this particular moment in time, I'd probably call it the film I most admire.
"Bridge" was directed by the great David Lean from a screenplay (by Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman) based on the novel by Pierre Boulle. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards for 1957, and won seven, including Best Picture, Director, Cinematography, Editing, Musical Score and Best Actor for Alec Guinness. It also won Best Screenplay, but as Wilson and Foreman were blacklisted at the time, they received no onscreen credit. Their Oscars arrived posthumously in 1984, and their names are listed in the restored edition of the film.
It's a rousing prisoner-of-war picture, with the usual heroic Allies showing terrific resolve in the face of their dastardly captors. But I think why the film stands up for me is that it's really about self-delusion. All of the main characters are in some way compromised, a combination of good and evil tendencies. I would go so far as to argue that Col. Nicholson, the British commander of the Allied prisoners, is the real villain of the piece.
Think about it: Nicholson is prepared to have himself and all of his other officers shot dead rather than perform manual labor at the insistence of Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa, who was the only Oscar nominee from the film who failed to take home a statue). Later, after winning his contest of wills with Saito -- by nearly suffocating to death in a tin "hot box" -- Nicholson undertakes the task of building a railway bridge for the Japanese with such misguided enthusiasm that he becomes a collaborator with the enemy.
As the bridge approaches its deadline and it's clear they will not finish in time, Nicholson orders his officers to do manual labor -- the same principle he was willing to die over. He even cajoles the sick men to hobble away from the hospital and lend a hand, too.
In his final act, Nicholson nearly upsets a plan by British commandos to blow up the bridge right as the first train steams over it. So invested has Nicholson become in the bridge, in what it represents to his ideals, that he alerts the Japanese soldiers and even struggles with one of the commandos. The bridge demolition still goes through -- in a spectacular cinematic display, in which Lean actually destroyed a real bridge and train -- but three of the four commandos are killed, including Maj. Shears (played by William Holden), who had previously escaped from the same prison camp.
Through it all, Nicholson is convinced that he's doing the right thing. He sees the bridge construction as a way to restore order and pride to his soldiers, who have become a rabble. Later, he sees it as a symbol of defiance against the enemy, to build a better bridge than they could themselves. The film is a lesson in how a series of decisions, each of which seems sound, can add up to calamity. I think our country's involvement in Iraq is a modern example.
A few other thoughts on the film:
I must have seen it a half-dozen times before I caught on to the subtle portrayal of Saito. A proud man, he is utterly crushed when Nicholson succeeds in building the bridge that he could not. There's also a bit near the end where Saito is shown cutting off his Bushido topknot, and slipping a dagger into his uniform right before the bridge's dedication. It seems clear now that Saito intended to kill Nicholson, or himself, or possibly one and then the other. Only the complication of Nicholson spotting the demolition wiring prevents this.
Shears, the ostensible American protagonist of the film, is a fraud, liar, impersonator and suck-up. He bribes the Japanese guards for favorable treatment, treats the arrival of Nicholson with great cynicism, and seems bent on doing anything to save his own skin. He only agrees to join the commandos when faced with court-martial and imprisonment for impersonating an officer. If he's supposed to represent the Yanks, we don't come off too great.
The use of the "Colonel Bogey March" musical theme throughout the film is interesting. It's an act of defiance by the British prisoners, but also illustrative of Nicholson's delusion. During the opening scene, where they're marching into camp for the first time, the men are whistling the tune. Slowly, the musical score takes up the melody until it sounds like a grand marching band booming away. This coincides with the shift to Nicholson's perspective. Despite the sorry state of his men, many of them marching barefoot, he still views them as British soldiers, brave and true.
(The tune really was used by Allied soldiers during WWII, who came up with some vulgar lyrics, including the revamped title, "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball." The film's soldiers were to sing these lines -- which continue, "Goring has two but very small; Himmler is somewhat sim'lar, and poor Goebbels has no balls at all!" -- but producer Sam Spiegel felt they were too vulgar, so they came up with the whistling instead.)
The film ends with the British doctor, having just watched the train wreck and the deaths of Nicholson and the commandos, shouting "Madness, madness" into the jungle air. To those who think war is great, it's an apt indictment.
Forty years before "Master and Commander," "Damn the Defiant!" is a rousing sea adventure with wonderfully staged ship-to-ship battles, and an engrossing dramatic storyline.
Based on the novel "Mutiny" by author Frank Tilsley, the film was called "H.M.S. Defiant" in its native Britain and everywhere else, but given a livlier title for the U.S. release. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert, a little-known name who directed several James Bond flicks, the original "Alfie" and "Educating Rita."
The main conflict is between Captain Crawford, wonderfully played by Alec Guinness, and his first officer, Lt. Scott-Padget (Dirk Bogarde). Crawford is a seasoned naval officer who believes in being humane to his crew, but is not above the severe treatment common during British Navy at the tail end of the 18th century -- such as flogging, and pressing civilians into service against their will. As the story opens, the Defiant is about to leave port a few dozen men short of a full crew, so a press gang is sent out to the streets and taverns to literally beat candidates into submission.
Still, Crawford is the sort of captain who believes in inspiring rather than subjugating a crew.
Contrastingly, Scott-Padget is a brilliant young officer, but believes sparing the rod spoils a crew. He has connections in high places in London, and Crawford learns that he has had his last two captains "broken" -- i.e., their careers ruined. Crawford is determined not to let it happen again.
Unfortunately, the conniving lieutenant has a vulnerable point with which to exploit his captain -- Crawford's son, who is on his first voyage aboard the Defiant as a midshipmen. It's one of the more interesting aspects of this period of history, when young boys could serve aboard warships, and even command grown men into battle.
Scott-Padget begins a campaign of targeting young Crawford for punishment, having him beaten for minor infractions and even inventing ones, such as carving the boy's initials into a table himself and then blaming the lad for it. At one point the boy nearly collapses from pain while high up in the rigging -- likely a fatal fall. Captain Crawford, intent on not showing favoritism toward his son, seems helpless against Scott-Padget's bold ploy to grab the upper hand in their contest of wills.
Observing all this is the crew, who have a scheme of their own to mutiny at a critical juncture in the British Navy's war against Napoleon's France. A large number of crews have made plans to simultaneously grab control of their ships and present demands for better pay and treatment. This is based on an actual incident in 1797 called the Spithead Mutiny, in which 16 crews staged something more like a strike than a violent mutiny. No one was killed, and most of their demands for better treatment were met.
Anthony Quayle plays Vizard, the ringleader of the Defiant crew, who must vie to keep in check the more vengeful members of his group, who want to see the hated Scott-Padget hauled up on a yardarm. If any officers are harmed, it makes it much more unlikely that the mutiny will end peacefully.
Interestingly, the smarter crew members point out that the hard-driving lieutenant actually helps their cause by invoking such harsh punishments for minor offenses. It's harder to make a case for ill treatment if it were only the benevolent Captain Crawford running the show.
With its blend of exciting action, flawless period costumes and settings, and the tense psychological warfare between captain and first mate, "Damn the Defiant" is a thrilling and sobering sea drama. I'm glad I discovered it.
