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This was the first of Lean's three elemental dramas -- Lawrence (sand), Doctor Zhivago (snow), Ryan's Daughter (sea) -- and the most spectacular, a feast for smart eyes. Two camels negotiate the swollen dunes like ants moving across a sleeping woman's legs. "The desert," says Lawrence, "is an ocean in which no oar is dipped." Lean and cinematographer Freddie Young translated that simile of the Saharan sea into screen poetry. They caught the wash of sand curling off the crest of a dune, the seaside effect of light shimmering over the parched expanse. When Lawrence finally treads in the surf of Aqaba, he can celebrate more than a military victory; he is primed to savor a mirage come true. The sand is now water, and this miracle man can walk on both.
But what miracle could save Lawrence from Hollywood's corrosive carelessness? Producer Sam Spiegel had shaved 20 minutes from the film's original 217, and 20 more were cut upon the film's 1970 rerelease. "It was as though some little rodent was nibbling at the healthy body of the film," O'Toole says. "And not even a tasteful rodent." Harris soon discovered that the negative was warped and scratched; splices were falling apart. The distributor, Columbia Pictures, had also junked more than 600,000 feet of dialogue and music tracks. Not only would the film have to be pieced together, but also ten minutes of the dialogue demanded redubbing.
"I like to take on things that I can't do easily," Harris says. Here was a worthy challenge. He imported prints from England, Germany and the Netherlands and married bits of them to snippets from Long Island City, N.Y., and Hollywood. Aided by Lean and film editor Anne V. Coates, he determined the sequence and duration of each shot. Parts of the dialogue track had been lost, so Harris lured some of the stars back into studios, using electronic tricks to lighten the aging voices. Arthur Kennedy, whom Harris located by calling every "Kennedy, A." in Savannah, recorded his lines there. Anthony Quinn did his dubbing in New York City. And Lean, 80, directed O'Toole and Alec Guinness (Prince Feisal) in London. "When I was sitting there," the director says, "there was hardly a line of dialogue that I couldn't finish." Finally, Lean and Harris supervised the mix in Hollywood. "They did a magical job there," he says. "It was a work of love."
So love conquers all, even the ravages of time. As Spielberg says, "Lawrence of Arabia 25 years later looks better and sounds better than any film that has been in theaters since Lawrence of Arabia." Now only three tasks remain. Lean should keep working with Bolt on their new film, Nostromo. Hollywood should get cracking on other overdue restoration work. And moviegoers should hie out to some triplex or googolplex and see how ravishing movies used to be.