"Lawrence of Arabia" in magnificent restoration

[Belle]

This has just appeared on YouTube and will quickly disappear. Both sound and image have been dramatically restored and, of course, the film is extremely relevant to provide a background for what is happening in Israel and Gaza right now. According to the restoration credits this latest iteration is from 2012, but I have that in my CD library and it's nowhere near as clear as this one.

I think this is Lean's greatest masterpiece; what a cinematic eye he had and what a phenomenal canvas in Jordan on which to paint his masterwork. The unalloyed joy of watching his camera tracking, sometimes in huge crane shots, following characters and action sequences putting audiences right there in the frame. It makes my heart sing. And Jarre's magnificent score put music to that image creating a unique kind of choreography. Watching a Panavision camera soar up on a crane and frame, up and over, a vista such as Wadi Rum in Jordan is one of those life-changing experiences. David Lean understood this very well.

There are some reservations, however, for me. Firstly, the film is too long. Up until the point of Intermission I couldn't fault this film but the second half drags and the psycho-sexual sequences with Jose Ferrer in the Turkish prison are gratuitous and superfluous. Anne Coates edited the film, no doubt with Lean sitting right beside her, but she needed to be more ruthless with the second half.

Secondly, the restoration itself; glorious colour pops right out at you, and every nuance of sound is available, but there are losses with gains achieved in restoration. I guess it's all compromise, but the granular texture of celluloid has been erased in the restoration process; now the film looks just like any other digital offering with respect to patina. As a film lover that granular celluloid texture was always essential and created using any number of sophisticated film stocks in order to manipulate the depth of grain. All that has been lost to a kind of bland, 'television' realism, which is a nett loss for this cinephile.

As to the acting performances and the direction itself, thousands of words have been written and spoken in the past and there's no need to elaborate on that. There is no doubt the screen writing for "Lawrence of Arabia" is amongst the very best ever produced in the history of film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1C7wwBEq6c&t=5486s

[jserraglio]

FWIW, here it is in 4K ... 33GB where it has been for the past two and a half years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBiZu5C6lCo

[david johnson]

By coincidence, last evening I listened to the Philharmonia version of Alford's Voice of the Guns that was on the soundtrack.

[Belle]

Again, my problem with the 4K is the loss of texture and the digital clarity which is hyper real. Looking at the newer restoration only confirms my reservations. I must have the sense that this is or actually once was FILM and each new iteration removes that quality. There's something glassy and icy about the 4K which doesn't appeal. By all means, improve the sound; great. But when the image is clinical something is definitely lost. Hopefully in the future something can be done about this. I'm sure David Lean would be unhappy. He adored the complex textures and lighting challenges required for celluloid film.

I dislike modern movies; surely we cannot use the term 'film' anymore. Or 'flicks'. Or 'cinema'. These words were derived from the characteristics of celluloid film and its camera and projection frame rates Today it should only be 'movies', because the images move on screens of varying kinds. But 'motion picture' is better.

Much has been lost in the move to digital movie-making. I remember hearing a discussion with a movie-maker/director. He said that the use of celluloid conferred more discipline on the film-making process because there was X amount of film in a day's shooting (another redundant word) and X number of magazines. Ergo, the day's work was limited by how much film you had available (lighting, set-ups etc.) and the actual COST (of course, many directors - like Hawks - got into trouble over cost over-runs). Today with digital you can 'record' all day long and battery life can be the only limitation. It can take a lot longer to make a movie because the main costs are in the labour and not the additional high cost of plastic materials and any number of subsequent generations of celluloid for editing and distribution. Also, there's no real sense (for me) of editing per se. Actors glide around rooms, often with hand-held digital cameras, and there are not boundaries between that and the next scene - or there seem to be no boundaries. One of the reasons for that lack of discipline is that many movies now are improvised; you get a real sense of that and this bores me to absolute death. Without a first class script - taut and structured - a movie is like a dropped pie to me; lacking substance, ingredients and architectural shape.

With so many genuine films from the past yet to discover and enjoy I'll pass on the modern incarnations.

[jserraglio]

The Godfather trilogy restoration on DVD kept the original film grain intact as well as the low key lighting.

I have no problem with old flicks. I saw Lawrence of Arabia and many other classics of the 50s and 60s in proper movie theaters when they first came out.

But some of the greatest films ever made date from the modern era.