Movie Review: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ Portrays a Very Modern Hero

He did all right for himself, the fellow who got 15th billing in Lawrence of Arabia. After the names Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, I. S. Johar, Gamil Ratib, Zia Mohyeddin, Michael Ray, John Dimech, Donald Wolfit and Omar Sharif, we are presented with this title: “Introducing Peter O’Toole as T. E. Lawrence.” Introducing? That’s the first clue that the film will prefer legend to fact. O’Toole wasn’t a neophyte, having had a major part in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England in 1960.

But what a beautiful legend it is. Allowances for changing tastes and styles must be made for many a film from decades past; that is not the case with Lawrence (streaming on the TCM app through tonight), which remains as invigorating as the night it was first shown, for the Queen, in 1962. Unlike, say, the Charlton Heston epics from the same period, it avoids camp and melodrama. There’s nothing to make a well-adjusted 21st-century viewer cringe (though a woke reading of the film would label it problematic for being a “white savior” narrative, missing the point as the woke tend to do). Lawrence is strikingly in tune with our times, with its early affinity for a self-constructed notion of identity, its admirable stance against racism, its white anxiety, its hints of sexual nonconformism, even its cosplay.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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He did all right for himself, the fellow who got 15th billing in Lawrence of Arabia. After the names Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, I. S. Johar, Gamil Ratib, Zia Mohyeddin, Michael Ray, John Dimech, Donald Wolfit and Omar Sharif, we are presented with this title: “Introducing Peter O’Toole as T. E. Lawrence.” Introducing? That’s the first clue that the film will prefer legend to fact. O’Toole wasn’t a neophyte, having had a major part in The Day They Robbed the Bank of England in 1960.

But what a beautiful legend it is. Allowances for changing tastes and styles must be made for many a film from decades past; that is not the case with Lawrence (streaming on the TCM app through tonight), which remains as invigorating as the night it was first shown, for the Queen, in 1962. Unlike, say, the Charlton Heston epics from the same period, it avoids camp and melodrama. There’s nothing to make a well-adjusted 21st-century viewer cringe (though a woke reading of the film would label it problematic for being a “white savior” narrative, missing the point as the woke tend to do). Lawrence is strikingly in tune with our times, with its early affinity for a self-constructed notion of identity, its admirable stance against racism, its white anxiety, its hints of sexual nonconformism, even its cosplay.