#93 - Lawrence of Arabia / Ben-Hur

Couple of special notes on two epic Oscar movies I saw recently. Both Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur are sprawling and expansive epics. Lawrence of Arabia I particularly loved. Must watch more Peter O'Toole films.

I wanted to highlight these films separately because they allow me to talk about one of my favorite cable channels: Turner Classic Movies. TCM shows movies the way they are intended - complete, uncut, no commercials. And that is how you need to watch movies of the scale and scope of Lawrence and Ben-Hur.

The other important thing about TCM is whenever possible they show widescreen (i.e. letterboxed) movies. I remember being ambivalent about letterboxing until I watched a short feature (on TCM come to think of it) about it. And the feature used both Lawrence and Ben-Hur to make the point about how much information is lost when panning and scanning a movie to fit a TV screen. And it is true. As someone said in the feature - when you pan and scan Lawrence of Arabia you lose the desert.

Now that I've seen it, I understand totally what he means. The desert is a character in the movie, much the same way the ship was a character in Titanic. The desert dwarfs everyone and everything around it - the sense of isolation, unforgiving heat, and unending expanse is intense.

I'm determined now to see Lawrence on a true movie screen. St. Louis doesn't have many revival houses except for some midnight shows at the Tivoli. So if I can, I might go to the Paramount Theatre in Austin in September. That would also take care of lucky #13 - visiting Austin.