Lawrence of Arabia or Smith in the Desert? David Lean's film reviewed by a historian

Jeremy Wilson

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Teachers often use David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" as an example of the treatment of history in dramatic presentations. For that reason I receive emails from students asking about its factual accuracy.

The Oxford workshop
In September 2002 I ran a one-day workshop on this topic at Exeter College, Oxford. At the core of my presentation was a scene-by-scene review of the film, asking straightforward questions about historical accuracy and the relationship of the dialogue and the events depicted to Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Those questions focused on three issues:

1. Did this happen?

2. If it did not happen, is it nevertheless broadly consistent with Seven Pillars, or with what we know happened and what we know about the historical characters on whom the film is based? Is it, for example, a valid dramatization that encapsulates known characteristics or attitudes?

3. Does the treatment tell us anything about the scriptwriter's interpretation?

Some useful reading
While preparing the workshop (a two-hour PowerPoint) I was struck both by the extent to which the film strayed from Seven Pillars, and by the directions this deviation took. I therefore became interested in Robert Bolt, and read the biography by Adrian Turner, Robert Bolt, Scenes from Two Lives (London, Hutchinson, 1998, hereafter referred to as Turner:Bolt). 

Two published accounts of the film also contain comments on the script. These are:

L. Robert Morris and Lawrence Raskin, Lawrence of Arabia, The 30^th Anniversary Pictorial History (NY. Doubleday, 1992, hereafter referred to as M&R).

Adrian Turner, The Making of David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (Limpsfield, Dragon's World, 1994, hereafter referred to as AT).

These books are interesting in many ways (I especially enjoyed the Bolt biography), and of course there are other books and countless articles about the film. 

For the specific questions I was seeking to answer, this film literature adds little what you can find by comparing the film systematically to Seven Pillars of Wisdom. However, it sometimes explains the motives behind particular aspects of the script.

As a result of the comparison, I reached some overall conclusions, which I put at the beginning of the Oxford presentation. I will do the same here.

Personal background
The film appeared forty years ago. I saw it during its first run at the Odeon, Leicester Square. Some time in the early 1970s I saw it again, as a preliminary to a radio programme that, in the event, I did not take part in. Neither of these viewings left me with an enduring memory of the plot, nor even an overall impression of Lawrence. I remembered the photography, the desert scenery, the costumes and the music. It may be that other people have been struck differently - certainly those who have seen the film several times. But I have often been curious as to why I could remember so little of the plot (I had, of course, no particular interest in Lawrence in the early 1960s). I have much more vivid recollections of the story-line of other films I saw at that time. Thinking about it, I concluded that the drama of the film is weak compared to its setting, like a picture that is overpowered by its frame. You could not say the same of Seven Pillars. The book contains richly descriptive passages, yet it is dominated by the story that it tells.

In the late 1960s, when I started research on Lawrence, I became aware of A.W. Lawrence's objections to the film. They did not unduly trouble me: you could expect members of the family to find fault. After all, the film is not a documentary. You could not tell such a complex story in a dramatic production - and surely no one expects historical movies to be 100% accurate? In the back of my mind, I imagined that about 50% of the script would be true to Seven Pillars.

I did not watch the film again until April 2002, when it was shown as evening entertainment at a conference I attended in Germany. During the interval since my previous viewing I had written the authorized biography, edited the "Oxford" text of Seven Pillars, and read countless contemporary documents from military and diplomatic archives.

This time, the film fell apart. Without even beginning to check details I found myself agreeing with A.W. Lawrence that the scriptwriter made "singularly little use" of Seven Pillars, and that he had "distorted the passages he has used . . . From opening . . . to the end, almost every event in this script is either fictitious or fictionalized." (quoted in M&R p.147)

After that, the questions from students seemed to have more point. Furthermore, I found myself asking, 'Why'? Why had the film-makers again and again rejected the Seven Pillars account in favour of their own inventions, even when the original was no less dramatic? That's an interesting question.  

Somewhere, way down in my priorities, I have had it in mind to convert my 2002 Oxford PowerPoint into web pages. Recent events in the Middle East have made that seem more worthwhile. Journalists mention to me that they have refreshed their knowledge of Lawrence by watching the film. In one case, the producer of a historical documentary told me he had instructed his researcher to see the film "for starters". Drama or not, people are treating the film as though it represents history. Today, misapprehensions about any aspect of the history of the Middle East are unhelpful.  

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