British born director. Educated at a Quaker (pacifist religious sect) school in Reading. Begins career in movies as clapboard boy and camera assistant in mid 1920s. Becomes chief editor in 1930 for Gaumont-British Sound News and writes and speaks commentaries. Works for Movietone News in 1930s. Invited to assist Noel Coward in directing "In Which We Serve" in 1942 about men who serve on a British fighting ship. Collaborates with Coward on next 3 pictures before beginning his own brilliant career. Best known for ambitious projects during 1960s, epic cinema, difficult locations, with high cultural and literary pretensions. Films: "In Which We Serve" (1942); "Blythe Spirit" (1945); two adaptations of Dickens' novels "Great Expectations" (1946) and "Oliver Twist" (1948); his distinctly anti-war film "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) about the building of a bridge by POWs, won 7 Oscars; "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), Academy Award for Best Picture 1962; Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), won 5 Oscars; "Ryan's Daughter" (1970).
Robert Bolt's screenplay of the life of T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935), a
British officer who spent 2 years in the desert aiding the Arabs in their
revolt against the Turkish Empire during the First World War. Based on Lawrence's
memoirs, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (1926). Shot on location
in Jordan where much of Lawrence's guerrilla activity took place. DL found
and reused the original railway line used by the Turks during WW1 and which
TEL helped blow up to disrupt the movement of Turkish troops and supplies.
Film begins with one of the most dramatic opening shots in cinema - TEL
quietly talking to his fellow officers about his desert exploits, as he
lights a cigarette the film cuts from a close-up of the flaring match to
the broad expanse of the Arabian desert.
TEL became a legendary figure because of his activities in the desert, aided
by the appearance of his memoirs in the mid 1920s. He was trained as an
Arab scholar at Oxford University and worked as an assitant to the British
Museum's excavations of archeological sites in Mesopotamia/Iraq. He was
commissioned as an officer when WW1 broke out and served in a number of
capacites in the Middle East. Because of his contacts with the Arabs TEL
was made a member of the British Delegation at the Peace Conference of 1919
and later in 1921-2 was an Advisor on Arab Affairs in the Middle Eastern
Division of the Colonial Office. He became disillusioned with the broken
promises the British had made to the Arabs about independece in exchange
for assisting the British fight the Turks. TEL confessed he was "bitterly
ashamed" with what the French and British did to the Arab people after
WW1. He also became disillusioned with the myth of "Lawrence of Arabia"
and changed his name to Shaw. He joined the R.A.F. and later died in 1935
in a motorcycle crash.
In the "Introductory Chapter" to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom
TEL explains what he attemtpted to do and his philosophy of life, something
which Lean's film to some extent captures. From the following passage we
get a good feeling of TEL's love for the Arab people, their attempt to achieve
an independent political existence, and his bitterness at the British betrayal
of this aspiration. Given the turmoil of this region since the First World
War TEL's remarks take on an added dimension of meaning:
In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock people. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace. All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in the Levant. I am afraid that I hope so. We pay for these things too much in honour and innocent lives...(Penguin edition, pp. 22-3).