On Sep 2, 11:16=A0pm, tomcervo wrote:
> On Sep 2, 11:43=A0am, calvin wrote:
> > If you and Bill don't like Lawrence of Arabia, that's fine.
> > I never really cared for it until recent years, but now it has
> > become one of my favorite movies of all time, the definitive
> > epic spectacle. =A0Dr. Zhivago is poor in comparison.
>
> As an epic, yes. But Deighton's point was that intimate,personal
> dramas like "The Cruel Sea" were closer to reality and closer to
> contemporary British character. =A0That's what "Lawrence" could have
> been too, but Lean went for the epic. If you look at the movie, the
> best scenes are between two or three men. The action scenes pall after
> a second viewing. ...
I know the best scenes are between a few men. That's
what I was telling Bill, about the sequence when Lawrence
has come back to Cairo to tell of the taking of Aqaba. That
sequence is endlessly re-watchable. But one needs to have
seen the taking of Aqaba, and the near-impossible struggle
across the desert that made it possible, to really appreciate
the telling of the achievement, and the reaction of Gen. Allenby,
Col. Brighton, and Mr. Dryden, and of all of the British officers
and men. It's the vastness and the intimacy that make it such
a great epic. It wouldn't be great if it was just a collection of
big scenes, or of only the smaller scenes, in my opinion. |