| Lawrence
of Arabia or Smith in the Desert?
David Lean's film reviewed by a
historian Jeremy Wilson
page 7
Contents list for
this section
8-13.
An account of Lawrence's ride inland from Rabegh to Feisal's camp in
Wadi Safra.
Historical
note:
This journey took from 21 to 23 October 1916 and is described in Seven
Pillars (SP22 Ch. 12-14; SP35 Ch. 10-12). Much of the
account in Seven Pillars is based on Lawrence's contemporary
report, printed in the Arab Bulletin of 18 November 1916. Seven
Pillars includes some accounts of conversations between Lawrence,
his guide, and others.
The guide was Sheikh
Obeid el-Rashid, of the Hazimi branch of the Beni Salem. With him was
his son Abdullah. Lawrence used Obeid's real name in SP22 but
called him 'Tafas' in SP26.
The first part of the
journey was through Masruh Harb territory; the second part through Beni-Salem
territory.
8.
With the guide Tafas on the way to Feisal's camp. Starts 0:17:00
What
happens:
Lawrence and Tafas are riding across sand dunes. Tafas tells Lawrence he
may drink, but drinks nothing himself because he is 'Bedu'. Lawrence
therefore pours his water back into the bottle.
There is no such
incident in Seven Pillars, but the scene is consistent with
Lawrence's policy of emulating the Bedu, as set out in his wartime
'Twenty-Seven Articles' and later in Seven Pillars (e.g. SP35
Ch. 1). For Bedu drinking habits see SP35 Ch. 59 p. 338.
Interpretation:
TEL is determined to match the Beduin in their own country.
9.
Conversation with Tafas after dark. Starts 0:19:57
What
happens:
Tafas asks if Lawrence is really from Britain, and then whether Britain
is desert country. Lawrence replies that it is "a fat country...
fat people." Tafas queries: "You are not fat?" Lawrence
replies - with a significant pause that makes it sound like a profound
insight - "No.... I'm different."
Comment:
Seven Pillars does not record such a conversation with Tafas.
Tafas' question in the film may, however, echo a conversation with
Sheikh Fahad el Hansha (SP35 Ch. 32 p. 185): "he plied me
with bowl after bowl of diuretic camel-milk between questions about
Europe, my home tribe, the English camel-pasturages, the war in the
Hejaz...."
Although Bolt claims
that his source was Seven Pillars, Lawrence's reply in the film
may be based on something he wrote from Carchemish before the war. In a
letter to his brother Bob of 12 Sept 1912 (HL p.230) he said:
"after all, I feel very little lack of English scenery: we have too
much greenery there, and one never feels the joy of a fertile place, as
one does here when one finds a thorn-bush and green thistle. Here one
learns an economy of beauty which is wonderful. England is fat - obese.'
I suspect this was
Bolt's source (or perhaps Wilson's, if the scene was in the original
script). It would be natural for someone interested in interpreting
Lawrence's personality to look at the early letters he had written to
his family.
Lawrence's views on
eating are expressed both in Home Letters and in Seven Pillars.
For example: "The assiduous
food-habit of a lifetime had trained the English body to the pitch of
producing a punctual nervous excitation in the upper belly at the fixed
hour of each meal: and we sometimes gave the honoured name of hunger to
this sign that our gut had cubic space for more stuff." (SP35
Ch. LV p. 315)
Despite these sources,
the interpretation in the film is wrong. Lawrence did not make this
comment about England because he saw himself as "different"
from the British, but because he had a romantic idea that Europeans
could learn something valuable from the primitive nomadic life: See, for
example, the letter to his mother of 11 May 1912: (HL p. 207):
"You remember that passage [in C.M. Doughty's Arabia Deserta]
that he who has once seen the palm-trees and the goat-hair tents is
never the same as he had been: that I feel very strongly, and I also
feel that Doughty's two years wandering in untainted places made him the
man he is, more than all his careful preparation before and since . . .
the Arab life is the only one that still holds the early poetry which is
the easiest to read."
In retrospect, Lawrence
would realise that his romantic pre-war notion had been wrong. That
personal disillusionment could have been a sub-plot in the film, if Bolt
had got this first element right. But Bolt did not. His interpretation
is part of an evolving characterization of Lawrence which is going in a
quite different direction, as successive scenes will show.
Incidentally, on the
question of physical size (which is not the 'fat' question that Tafas
posed), Lawrence commented in SP22 Ch. 100, writing of the
Imperial Camel Corps: "The massive men were inevitable, since
England did not breed men little as the Beduin, except in odd cases,
like myself." Here, of course, Lawrence is referring to his height
- a reference the film-makers could hardly have used, even if they knew
about it, because Peter O'Tool was much taller than Lawrence.
10.
The following morning. Starts: 0:21:20
What
happens:
Lawrence and Tafas are seated. Lawrence sees Tafas looking at his
pistol, and after a moment's reflection gives it to Tafas. In exchange,
Tafas offers Lawrence 'Bedu food', which Lawrence evidently doesn't much
like, though he tactfully says it is 'Good'.
Source:
The first part is entirely fictional. No such incident appears in Seven
Pillars. The second part is loosely based on an incident described
in Seven Pillars.
Comment:
The beginning the scene is both strange and highly improbable. The scene
as a whole may, of course, have been intended partly as comic relief.
But what it shows surely has some significance in the development of the
drama. Lawrence gives away his pistol, which is apparently his only
weapon. For a British officer close to the battlefront in wartime, that
would be an extraordinary action - so extraordinary that it is difficult
to believe that it is not intended to be significant. What might it
signify?
[My thanks to Lynn Teale for suggesting that the symbolism of the gift
may have been that soon afterwards it was the cause of Tafas's death.
This scene was written by Michael Wilson and adopted by Bolt. Perhaps
the 'message' would have been more obvious if Wilson's script had been
used.]
-
It could be
intended to show a deep personal dislike of weapons and killing, as
some kind of dramatic antithesis to what will happen at Tafas in
Part 2. If so, it is false to Lawrence's character. As an Oxford
undergraduate he had volunteered for the Officers' Training Corps.
He had carried and used a weapon for self-defence on his 1909
walking tour. He had enjoyed target-shooting at Carchemish and was
an excellent shot. He had volunteered for military service at the
outbreak of war in 1914. He was not, therefore, a squeamish
pacifist.
-
It could be
intended as an early sign of 'egomania' -- the kind of thing that
(according to the film) would later lead him to declare the Arab
Revolt on his own with Ali in Deraa. Was he so over-confident
that he thought he didn't need to carry a weapon in this place which
any sane man would consider dangerous? If that is what the script is
trying to say, it is patently wrong, and this is certainly not based
on Seven Pillars. Lawrence well understood the importance of
carrying arms in the desert.
The gift of Bedu food
is closer to Seven Pillars, though the giver was not Tafas but
Khallaf, a local tribesman (paid, it turned out, to report on travellers
to the Turks) who joined them briefly. This encounter took place after,
not before, they passed the well at Masturah. (See SP35 pp 85-6).
Surprisingly, Lawrence
is shown taking the food with his left hand. This is a serious cultural
mistake, presumably by the film-makers. Having by then spent several
years in the Middle East, Lawrence knew that the Beduin never use the
left hand for eating. As he wrote in the 'Feasting' chapter of Seven
Pillars (SP35 Ch 46): "all had to be disposed of with
the right hand which alone was honourable." [Thanks to both Janet
Daily and Ronald Florence for pointing out this error].
11.
Riding on. Starts 0:22:28
What
happens:
Lawrence and Tafas are seen riding across sand dunes, till they reach a
crest where Tafas dismounts and makes his camel crouch down. Lawrence
does the same. Tafas points out 'Bedu' in the distance, and Lawrence
finds them with his binoculars. Tafas says: "From here to Lord
Feisal's camp is Harith country... I am not Harith." He is
pleasantly surprised when Lawrence shows that he knows he is a Hazimi of
the Beni Salem. As they ride on,
Tafas teaches Lawrence how to ride a camel.
Source:
Part of this comes from Seven Pillars, but the rest is fiction.
In the real journey, Lawrence knew who Sheikh Obeid [Tafas] was from the
outset. They started out in the territory of the Masruh, which was not
Tafas' branch of the Beni Salem; but they entered his home territory in
the second part of the journey. In the film, this is reversed: the
second part of the journey is through hostile territory, and the hostile
tribe is switched from the Masruh to the Harith. This may have been
Wilson's invention, since the essentials of Masturah Well scene that
follows were his, and it is crucial to that scene that the well is in
Ali's Harith territory.
Comment:
In reality, as stated in the
1922 text of Seven Pillars but not in the subscribers'
abridgement, the Harith territory was elsewhere. In the 1922 account of
the incident at Masturah Well, Lawrence learns more from Obeid [Tafas]
about these "robber Sherifs of Modhig, the little village in the
defile of Wadi Shamiya, the upper reaches of Fatima, where it broke from
Nejd through the eastern divide of the Hejaz hills north of Mecca, on
its course towards the sea. The place was rich, but small, and the most
of it would fall to Ali some day: but others of the clan were poor,
unable to live on their properties. In the days before Sherif Hussein
they used to get their living on the roads, by holding up caravans of
pilgrims or merchants (and indeed it was usually the same thing) on
their way from Medina to Mecca or from Nejd, and taking toll of
them."
Standing back a little,
it seems to me that the film's disregard for geography - here and,
spectacularly, elsewhere, reflects a cavalier attitude towards the Arab
world that could be described as 'imperialist'. Bolt would not, I
imagine, have placed London and York next to one another in a film
script, nor New York and Boston. Yet his geographical aberrations in Lawrence
of Arabia are hardly better.
Lawrence comments on
camel-riding in SP35 (Ch. 10, p. 80): "Tafas gave me hints
as we went: indeed, it was one of the few subjects on which he would
speak."
12.
Masturah Well. Starts 0:25:29
What
happens:
Lawrence and Tafas arrive at Masturah Well. Tafas is obviously uneasy.
He draws up some water and Lawrence drinks. Tafas comments that it is a
Harith well, and "The Harith are a dirty people." While Tafas
gets water for the camels, Lawrence lies on a nearby hummock and begins
to take a compass bearing. He turns to see Tafas staring at something in
the distance. A solitary rider (Ali) is seen approaching through the
mirage. As Ali gets closer, Tafas runs to fetch the revolver Lawrence
has given him from his camel-bag. Before he can fire, Ali shoots him
dead. The revolver falls at Lawrence's feet.
A tense conversation
follows between Ali and Lawrence, during which we learn that Ali went to
school in Cairo and can read and write. As Ali prepares to ride off
(with Lawrence's revolver as booty), Lawrence lectures him about
the folly of tribal feuding, accusing him of being "greedy,
barbarous, and cruel". Chastened, Ali offers to guide Lawrence to
Feisal. Lawrence refuses the offer, saying he will get to Wadi Safra on
his own, with the help of his compass. Ali hooks the compass with his
riding stick and threatens to take it, but when Lawrence accuses him of
being a thief he returns it. He then he leaves.
Source:
The scene is entirely fictitious. It bears almost no relationship to the
events at the Masturah well described in SP35 Ch. X pp. 80-2.
Moreover, it completely misrepresents Bedouin practice, which allowed
reasonable use of wells by travellers. The incident as portrayed is so
improbable and offensive to Arab opinion that the Middle East expert
Anthony Nutting, an adviser to the film, urged that it be dropped.
However, Lean regarded Ali's arrival through a mirage as one of the
artistic triumphs of the film, and the introduction of Ali was of key
importance to Wilson's plot, to which Lean seems by this time to have
been wedded.
Comment:
In essence, the scene
pre-dated Bolt's involvement with the script. Joel Hodson's Lawrence
of Arabia and American Culture (Westport, Greenwood, 1995, pp.
114-5) gives both Wilson's and Bolt's versions of the dialogue, which
are similar.
Whatever the views of
his scriptwriters, it is clear that David Lean felt no need to respect
historical fact - especially if the alternative could be a spectacular
and sensational episode.
13.
From Masturah Well to Feisal's camp. Starts 0:33:27
What
happens:
Lawrence is seen riding on his own, leading Tafas' camel. He reaches a
place where there are high cliffs, and begins to sing 'I'm the man who
broke the bank at Monte Carlo'. As he sings louder, he hears echoes from
the cliff. He sings louder still, until he is shouting. As he reaches
the end of the song we see Colonel Brighton, who begins a slow handclap.
Lawrence is alarmed. Brighton calls him, and they meet.
This is the approach to
Wadi Safra where Feisal's army is camped. Brighton asks about Lawrence's
mission, and Lawrence replies (sounding somewhat effeminate) that he is
from the Arab Bureau and has come to appreciate the situation. Brighton
tells him that the situation is "bloody awful", and that the
Arabs have no morale. Brighton then orders Lawrence firmly to keep his
mouth shut in Feisal's camp. He is to make his appreciation and leave.
The conversation is interrupted by the sound of Turkish aircraft
attacking Feisal's camp. The two watch the Turkish aircraft turn for
another bombing run, and then hurry to see what is happening. Brighton
says angrily that he has already told Feisal to move south, out of range
of the aircraft. "They simply will not understand what modern
weapons do".
Source:
All this is fiction. Lawrence travelled from Masturah Well to Wadi Safra
with his guide (who had not been attacked at the well, still less
killed). There was no other British officer with Feisal's army.
Comment:
I don't understand what message the singing episode seeks to convey.
Lawrence is shown riding in British uniform through territory that (in
reality) contained active pro-Turkish elements. There was also strong
anti-Christian feeling among the tribes, and for that reason Lawrence
had (in reality) been given an Arab cloak to conceal his uniform. It is
interesting that Peter O'Toole, who studied Lawrence after accepting the
role, did not like the singing episode (I think I saw that in
Brownlow:Lean, but I can't find the page). To sing loudly in such
circumstances would have been amazingly foolish. Perhaps it is supposed
to indicate Lawrence's alleged 'egomania'.
While the conversation
with Brighton is imaginary, some device was needed to establish the
predicament of the Arab rebels, as a basis for the future development of
the drama. It is true that Arab morale had collapsed in the face of
Turkish artillery at Medina, and that they were terrified of air attack,
though I'm not sure that Turkish aircraft attacked Wadi Safra.
Brighton's advice that
Feisal should "move south" is more questionable. On the map
(which the audience never sees) such a move would have taken Feisal's
forces close to Rabegh, leaving the Turks free to advance. The
scriptwriters seem to have abandoned real-life geography and tactical
detail. The 'move south' advice serves at this point simply to indicate
that Feisal is ignoring conventional British military thinking, and
paying the price.
Short-cuts are
unavoidable in a dramatization, so no one should expect the film be
strictly accurate about geography and tactics. However, Feisal's
situation as portrayed in the film bears very little relationship to
what Lawrence reported in Seven Pillars (and more fully in
contemporary documents).
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