100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #49: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Directed by David Lean. Written by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. Starring Peter O'Toole.

I hope the money men don’t find out that I’d pay them to let me do this - David Lean

The two most famous hard cuts in all of cinema may be the cut to space in 2001: A Space Odyssey and this cut towards the beginning of David Lean’s magnum opus Lawrence of Arabia.

Keep in mind that up until this time the majority of movies- when depicting faraway places- shot their films either on studio backlots or in the nearby, convenient deserts of California. And even the ones that did shoot on location- most notably William Wyler’s Roman Holiday- still made the decision to shoot in black-and-white so as to not “distract from the story”. The top grossing color films that came before Lawrence were all mega-budget films that were shot on soundstages including The Ten Commandments, White Christmas, and Ben-Hur. Shooting on location was the impractical, expensive, and arduous option when compared to shoots that never had to leave the studio.