Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

It took over a thousand people to get the story of T.E. Lawrence to the screen, but there was one guiding intelligence ruling them all—director David Lean. He and producer Sam Spiegel decided to follow the Oscar-winning The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) with the story of Lawrence’s World War I campaign to unify the Arab tribes in a rebellion against Turkey. He led the efforts to find the perfect Lawrence in Peter O’Toole and film extensively in Jordan (with additional sequences in Spain and Morocco). Working with cinematographer Freddie A. Young, he created sweeping desert vistas but also filled each image with small, telling details. The result was hailed as a thinking person’s epic, where spectacle was put at the service of character and theme. 

d. David Lean, 227m, 70mm