1957 Oscar Viewing Project

One of the biggest regrets I had with finishing the blog was that I wasn't going to do one last season of ballots for the OVP.  The series that basically started this blog was going to get ignored, and while I cheated a bit by having the Halloween blogathon serve as a "placeholder" for the Oscar Viewing Project goodbye, that wasn't enough.  I'll be honest-October has been really challenging on a personal level (one of the main reasons that I'm ending the blog is because I had a wake up call about my personal life), but I have pushed myself in the past couple of days to finish the four remaining films I hadn't completed from 1957 so that they were done, and I can officially unveil the 27th completed season of the series (a truncated version, as I didn't have the bandwidth to write a full twenty articles, but at least I got something!).  For those who have enjoyed this (including me), I want you to know that I have started to transpose all of the previous OVP winners from past seasons onto my Letterboxd lists, and will continue to do the winners on there going forward, so if you want to continue to see what I'm picking (I'm ending the blog-the Oscar Viewing Project continues to see another day), you can find me here.  My brother is trying to help me figure out the best way to present the My Ballots (I didn't have time to finish that for 1957), but I promise as soon as he figures out a way to do this (he's better at such things than I am), I will continue posting those on Letterboxd as well.  But below, you will find the ranked from first-to-last choices for the 30th Academy Awards.

That's enough shop talk.  Now it's time to go back to an era of Sputnik & the Little Rock Nine, of Althea Gibson & Mamie Eisenhower.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Picture

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. 12 Angry Men

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: The Bridge on the River Kwai has been a part of my life since I can't remember when-it was my grandfather's favorite movie, and one that played in the background (along with Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora!) on repeat after he had a stroke.  The only one of these movies that really approaches its grandeur is Witness for the Prosecution, which honestly is kind of a miracle and the best Christie adaptation I've ever seen.  12 Angry Men is very well-done, and a masterpiece but one that might (unfairly) have lost some luster it's been done so much since, and the other two are handsome-but-dull (Sayonara) or a total snooze (Peyton Place).

Director

1. David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Billy Wilder (Witness for the Prosecution)

3. Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men)

4. Joshua Logan (Sayonara)

5. Mark Robson (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Even more than the Best Picture field (if you hadn't noticed, these are carbon copies of each other), David Lean takes the lead here.  Oscar Winner Sydney Pollack once said that a director's job is "less artist, more damage containment expert" and that might be what is drawing me to Lean to a degree.  He has the more challenging job, particularly given that Wilder & Lumet are largely staying in the same locations, and are bringing to life staged plays, but it's more than that.  Think of the ending of The Bridge on the River Kwai, having so many storylines come together with staggering precision-you only get that from thinking meticulously, even in a gigantic epic.

Actor

1. Alec Guinness (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Charles Laughton (Witness for the Prosecution)

3. Anthony Franciosa (A Hatful of Rain)

4. Marlon Brando (Sayonara)

5. Anthony Quinn (Wild is the Wind)

The Lowdown: This is entirely down to the British actors (Guinness & Laughton).  Franciosa (who is in lead, Shelley Winters' memory be damned), gives a good performance but is in an underwritten movie, while Brando is a fabulous actor in a stuffed shirt sort of role.  Guinness gets my vote over Laughton primarily because he's playing so specifically to this character.  Laughton's role is appropriately loud-and-boisterous, he's typecast but in the best way possible.  Guinness isn't initially who I would guess in 1957 for this role (he was better known for comic work in movies before this), but that works to his advantage as Colonel Nicholson is a man obsessed, whose madness toward the end as he realizes what he's done is a crucial component to the entirety of Lean's epic.

Actress

1. Anna Magnani (Wild is the Wind)

2. Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve)

3. Deborah Kerr (Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison)

4. Elizabeth Taylor (Raintree County)

5. Lana Turner (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Here's where I'm going to confess something-I have never gotten the hype around Joanne Woodward's performance in The Three Faces of Eve.  I think part of why she got this award (and so many plaudits since) is because it was such a revolutionary idea onscreen-a woman playing three characters in one.  But it isn't as impressive as some of her peers were, and while Woodward is a good actress, this isn't her best work, and she's only as high as she is on this list because this is a weak field.  Magnani stands out more for me-she's a more obvious actor compared to the organic Woodward, but the way she plays this woman is so three-dimensional and felt.  I love it.  Kerr is lovely-but-not-stretched in Heaven Knows, while Taylor & Turner both have their best (sultriest) instinct muted in their dull pictures.

Supporting Actor

1. Sessue Hayakawa (The Bridge on the River Kwai)

2. Red Buttons (Sayonara)

3. Russ Tamblyn (Peyton Place)

4. Arthur Kennedy (Peyton Place)

5. Vittorio de Sica (A Farewell to Arms)

The Lowdown: Hayakawa, at one point a major leading star of the Silent Era, made a comeback with this role very late in his career, and it's easily the best of this quintet.  The way that his Colonel Saito creates a humanizing aspect to his villain is years ahead of what you'd normally expect from such a part, and stands up against what Guinness & Holden are doing.  Buttons' heartbreaking work is a worthy runner-up, and I like that Russ Tamblyn got a nomination here (he's my favorite part of Peyton Place), but Hayakawa is the best choice of the bunch.

Supporting Actress

1. Elsa Lanchester (Witness for the Prosecution)

2. Miyoshi Umeki (Sayonara)

3. Carolyn Jones (The Bachelor Party)

4. Hope Lange (Peyton Place)

5. Diane Varsi (Peyton Place)

The Lowdown: Man is this a rough one.  Given 3/5 of these are in movies that underwhelmed me already, and The Bachelor Party is just an odd picture, thank the lord for Elsa Lanchester.  Her doddering in Witness for the Prosecution is marvelous, and would've made a fine winner (I would've found room for her costar Una O'Connor, and will in my My Ballot).  The rest, though, are uninspired in a field that could've been great had they invested more in musicals in 1957.  Umeki's groundbreaking win isn't the worst thing to happen to this category (there's an understanding in her work that I liked), and seeing Carolyn Jones outside of the Addams mansion is a change of pace, but man...Lanchester is the only truly acceptable winner of the bunch.

Original Screenplay

1. Funny Face

2. The Tin Star

3. I Vitelloni

4. Designing Woman

5. Man of a Thousand Faces

The Lowdown: It's weird, given the weak point of most of Fred Astaire's films is a cobbled together by scotch tape plot, that I'm giving his film this statue.  In a perfect world, you'd probably see a few of the Foreign Language Film nominees included in this lineup, but the only subtitled film of this bunch is Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni, where the screenplay is one of the weakest parts in an otherwise really attractive movie.  Funny Face is well-structured, and if you get past the fact that the 30-year age difference should be more of a plot point (let's be real, though, Fred Astaire & Audrey Hepburn are such ageless figures it's hard to think of them as anything more than ephemeral tricks-of-the-light), the only movie that comes close is The Tin Star, a well-structured morality tale that's admittedly a bit predictable and guided by strong work from Henry Fonda & Anthony Perkins.

Adapted Screenplay

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. 12 Angry Men

3. Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: The real battle here is between The Bridge on the River Kwai and 12 Angry Men, both impeccable screenplays.  12 Angry Men it's sometimes hard for me to tell if I should dock points for it clearly being a filmed play or if that works onscreen.  Since I can never quite tell, I'm going to go with Bridge, which has a stronger end game, and also manages to tell a lot of subplots without losing focus (harder than it sounds).  Kudos to Heaven Knows in third, particularly in the way that it handles the complicated (for 1957) romantic angles of the story that otherwise could've been abandoned by a different writer.

Foreign Language Film

1. Nights of Cabiria (Italy)

2. Gates of Paris (France)

3. The Devil Strikes at Night (Germany)

4. Nine Lives (Norway)

5. Mother India (India)

The Lowdown: In the early years of this category, you'd get masterpieces from renowned filmmakers like Fellini, which makes it really hard to judge in some ways because how do you compete with something like Nights of Cabiria, one of the all-time great pictures and featuring a beautiful performance from Giuletta Massini?  It's a pity, though, as there's some treasure trove films here too.  Gates of Paris is a wonderfully dark French crime film (with a romantic subplot that'll rip your heart out), while The Devil Strikes at Night gives you a really strong look at the rise of fascism from a film noir perspective. The only one of the bunch I couldn't get into was the unfathomably long Mother India, a well-regarded Bollywood picture that was at least two hours too long.

Score

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. An Affair to Remember

3. Raintree County

4. Boy on a Dolphin

5. Perri

The Lowdown: Any of the Top 3 here would be a worthy prize (Boy on the Dolphin feels like it got nominated based on the composer, and Perri ranks as one of the sillier films to ever be cited for an Academy Award since it's just a children's nature documentary about a squirrel).  Even with the most famous cut of the score being a non-original piece (the "Colonel Bogey's March" is not original to the picture), I think that Bridge does the most with its music, and it will get my nod.  Either Affair or Raintree would make good choices, though, both of them lush & filled with a lot of romance (I'm still finalizing my My Ballot Awards, as I mentioned above, but as of this writing all three of these films would make my nominees).

Original Song

1. "Wild is the Wind" (Wild is the Wind)

2. "All the Way," (The Joker is Wild)

3. "An Affair to Remember," (An Affair to Remember)

4. "Tammy," (Tammy and the Bachelor)

5. "April Love," (April Love)

The Lowdown: A genuinely terrific group of songs-there's not a bad one in the bunch, and in many cases, we're getting some big-deal singers' signature tunes.  The Top 3, in particular, is pretty immovable, and my pick of "Wild is the Wind" might be a little cheat given my favorite version of the song is by Nina Simone (not, as sung in the movie, by Johnny Mathis, though Mathis is also marvelous).  It's such a creepy love ballad.  Sinatra's classic "All the Way" and Marni Nixon belting out the standard "An Affair to Remember" (through Deborah Kerr) are totally acceptable answers here too, though.

Sound

1. Pal Joey

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. Sayonara

4. Les Girls

5. Gunfight at the OK Corral

The Lowdown: I will be honest-every single one of these films will be getting replaced when I do my My Ballot.  That's not to say there isn't good stuff happening (Pal Joey has some solid musical numbers and the dialogue is crisp, Witness has the great final courtroom scene & Marlene singing), but nothing here stands out in a big way.  The shootout in Gunfight, for example, is a disappointment (the best part of it is the Frankie Lane title song), and Les Girls is a great movie, but not one that has a lot of super memorable musical numbers (it works better on its plot).  The Bridge on the River Kwai is clearly missing.

Art Direction

1. Les Girls

2. Funny Face

3. Raintree County

4. Sayonara

5. Pal Joey

The Lowdown: Gorgeous sets abound here, but in particular for the Top 2 (in another year Raintree County's elaborate and epic southern looks would be a serious contender for the win, here it has to settle for the bronze).  I'm going to go with Les Girls for the statue because it plays more with the beautiful looks of Paris than Funny Face does, and the sets have a bit more color and personality, but honestly they're both so good this is splitting hairs.

Cinematography

1. Funny Face

2. An Affair to Remember

3. The Bridge on the River Kwai

4. Sayonara

5. Peyton Place

The Lowdown: This one comes down to the romances for me-this is the one area where I think Bridge is good but isn't necessarily breaking the bank except for the final sequence, and so I'd put this between Affair and Funny Face.  Funny Face probably benefits a bit from its plot-there film is literally about catching the exact right photo of Audrey Hepburn, and you get gorgeous scenes and fashion shots of her to accompany that.  I do like the intercontinental glamour and radiant CinemaScope beauty of An Affair to Remember, but if forced to pick, I'd end with Funny Face.

Costume Design

1. Funny Face

2. Les Girls

3. Raintree County

4. An Affair to Remember

5. Pal Joey

The Lowdown: With costume design, sometimes you get contests where you were never going to win.  There are really good nominees in this category (for my money, the best lineup Oscar pulled together in 1957), and some are extraordinary.  That exquisite orange & white dress Deborah Kerr wears in An Affair to Remember, the plunging bodices sported by a never-more-beautiful Elizabeth Taylor in Raintree County, the monochromatic swimsuits & matching chapeaus of Les Girls...all grand.  But when Audrey Hepburn in a strapless scarlet dress & matching scarf walks down the steps of the Louvre in Funny Face...that's what makes movies, movies-it simply has to win.

Film Editing

1. The Bridge on the River Kwai

2. Witness for the Prosecution

3. Gunfight at the OK Corral

4. Pal Joey

5. Sayonara

The Lowdown: I feel like too many of these categories are Bridge on the River Kwai facing off against Witness for the Prosecution with the latter coming up short.  This is true here, even though it's close-Bridge sometimes sags in the middle (maybe its weakest aspect even if the beginning and end are so well-conceived), and you can't deny that Witness builds its tension masterfully.  Still, the ending of Bridge is just too good to ignore, and neither Marlene Dietrich or Dennis Hopper's very effective final scene in Gunfight at the OK Corral can really compete with it.

Special Effects

1. The Spirit of St. Louis

2. The Enemy Below

The Lowdown: Our only category with only two nominees in the bunch, this is a battle between two war pictures.  The Spirit of St. Louis is really impressive when you keep in mind this is a special effects category, and so therefore the plane stunt effects and trick flying should be part of your calculation.  It helps that Jimmy Stewart was a pilot in WWII and actually knows what he was doing.  The Enemy Below is both a lesser movie, and honestly has lesser effects by comparison (Lindbergh gets my win).  It's not bad-the water effects toward the end all are strong & believable in a world without CGI, but it's nothing you wouldn't see in a dozen other war films of the era.

The Swan (1956)

Film: The Swan (1956)

Stars: Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness, Louis Jourdan, Agnes Moorehead, Jessie Royce Landis

Director: Charles Vidor

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Grace Kelly-click here to learn more about Ms. Kelly (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In April of 1955, Grace Kelly headed to Cannes as part of the US delegation for that year's festivities.  While she was there, there was an arranged meeting with Prince Rainier of nearby Monaco, which led to a courtship, which led to one of the most spectacular moments in movie history when Grace Kelly, movie star extraordinaire, became a literal Hollywood princess.  As we'll discuss below, this is where Grace Kelly's acting career ended-just weeks after winning an Oscar, the highest honor for an actress, she was basically on her way out of the industry, as Kelly would never work again as an actress in films after going royal.  She had two movies in the can before she left Hollywood which came out after she was a princess.  One was High Society, which I've seen (and which pales in comparison to the original Philadelphia Story).  The other was one I hadn't, and so I saw The Swan for this project, and as luck would have it (for both me and for MGM's publicity department) the film stars Kelly...playing a princess.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Princess Alexandra (Kelly) who is a relatively low-ranking royal living her years out with her mother Princess Beatrix (Landis), after the announcement that Crown Prince Albert (Guinness) will be visiting.  Beatrix is insistent that this is the opportunity they've been waiting for to get back their stature, marrying the Crown Prince & making Alexandra a queen.  The only problem is that Alexandra is a bit of a bore, and Albert is far more interested in music & other nerdy endeavors to give Alexandra much heed.  Beatrix comes up with a plan to have her sons' handsome tutor Nicholas (Jourdan) try to woo Alexandra in hopes of making Albert jealous, but the plan backfires spectacular when it turns out that Nicholas is already in love with Alexandra...and quickly she is in love with him.  When the Queen (Moorehead) comes to town, everything comes to a head as the love triangle must find one side to stand on.

According to what I've read, the producers of The Swan (based on a play by Molnar) considered changing the traditional ending of the film, which ends with Alexandra & Nicholas apart because she cannot marry a commoner.  However, after Princess Margaret declined to marry Peter Townsend, they decided the ending should stand, and so the movie ends with Alexandra likely to marry either no one or (more probably) Albert, knowing that neither will be particularly happy together but they've fulfilled their duty to their country.  It might be this reason why I like it.  The Swan is not a particularly good movie (even if the sets are really fun & the supporting cast is decent), but I enjoyed it.  It's the kind of turn-off-your-brain romantic drama that you can sometimes get sucked into on a rainy afternoon, and that was the mood I was in for the picture.

Kelly is a dud in the movie, pretty blasé (though it is fun to see her acting with a leading man who is actually her age after she wooed men 10+ years older than her the rest of the month) and more ornamental.  Watching Kelly this month (and I've now seen virtually every film she ever made), I'm struck by how Hitchcock is the only director who ever really got her as a performer.  She is so much better-suited for his work, and she fits in some ways with actresses like Lizabeth Scott or January Jones, who were really good at one specific thing, but otherwise fell flat.

Her life would look like a storybook, but wouldn't exactly be one.  Reports of the marriage run from it being a good one with some problems to one that felt isolating for Kelly.  She would give Rainer an heir (and two spares), continuing on the line of the Monaco royal family, but she had to give up acting, despite attempts to get back in roles in Marnie and The Turning Point.  Kelly's life was cut short in 1982 when she suffered a stroke while driving with her daughter Stephanie-Stephanie was fine, but Kelly died due to injuries to her brain and chest at the age of just 52.  Next month we're going to take a look at an actress who was one Kelly's contemporaries, one who like Kelly would work with Alfred Hitchcock early on in her career, but while Kelly's film career was defined by Hitchcock, this actress would make him a rather dismissible chapter in an otherwise other-worldly career.

OVP: The Card (1952)

Film: The Card (1952)...this was also released as The Promoter in the United States so you may know it by either title

Stars: Alec Guinness, Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson, Petula Clark

Director: Ronald Neame

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Recording)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Here's something weird that I don't know if we've ever discussed on the blog, but is worth remembering in old film discussions.  From the 1930's through the 1950's, it was relatively common for British films (and novels) to come to the Americas with a different name, and the rhyme-or-reason around it was a bit arbitrary.  If you look at the titles of books by Agatha Christie, for example, some of the translations are not particularly American/British to the point where a reader wouldn't have understood the difference (Murder is Easy/Easy to Kill comes to mind) yet they still altered them.  Other times, though, it feels appropriate, as is the case for The Card, which from what I can tell was British slang at the time for a "clever, audacious person."  This feels fitting, as The Card and its central star of Alec Guinness surely deliver a naughty little story about luck (and making your own luck when none presents itself).

(Spoilers Ahead) Our hero in The Card is Denry Machin (Guinness), a man of no station who wants to move his way up through society, and isn't above cheating his way to get there.  Throughout the film, Denry is given multiple opportunities to stay where he is, because his station as a lower-class man demands him to appreciate the meager scraps he's given, or instead to step forward and claim what his talent & ambition demand.  Denry does that, courting the approval of a wealthy Countess (Hobson), occasionally meeting up with an equally ambitious gold-digger named Ruth (Johns), but ultimately falling in love with another woman of little means, Nellie (Clark, yes Petula Clark of "Downtown" fame).  This romance, though, doesn't stop his ambitions, and he eventually, against the odds, watches his mechanizations bare fruit, as he goes from commoner to the city's youngest mayor in the course of the picture.

The Card is a charming feature, the kind that Guinness appeared in quite frequently in this era (before he became a more celebrated dramatic actor with The Bridge on the River Kwai).  It's cheeky, and while it's not as amusing as it should be (Guinness is fun, but considering his skills I know he could've been better), it's still an enjoyable, brief movie that takes a bit about the class system and how honor isn't nearly as important to the conversation as society would've thought in the 1950's (and certainly wouldn't be in the future decades).  Glynis Johns steals the movie wholesale as a sly, social-climbing piano teacher, just as willing to score a point as Guinness's Denry.

The film's nomination for Best Sound is unusual.  The film has one giant scene during a storm that might have attracted the Academy, but otherwise this is an atypical nomination.  It's not a bad one by any means-the film has crystal clear dialogue (Glynis Johns' voice twinkles in every scene), and the score playfully interjects, but it's just a standard movie...there's nothing remotely standout about this movie's sound work.  This was still in the era where the sound wasn't always geared toward "most" or specific tropes for the Oscar, so it's hard to tell Oscar's motives, though while its parades, horse chases, & storm work may be subtle, but it's well-executed within the confines.  I wouldn't have nominated it, but I don't have a lot of complaints.

OVP: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Film: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Stars: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Arthur Kennedy
Director: David Lean
Oscar History: 10 nods/7 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actor-Peter O'Toole, Supporting Actor-Omar Sharif, Adapted Screenplay*, Original Score*, Cinematography*, Art Direction*, Film Editing*, Sound)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

In college, I majored in Film History, and in order to graduate with honors, I had to do a thesis paper that literally constituted one year of my life focused on the transition period from Classical Hollywood to New Hollywood cinema.  While I saw dozens of films for the project (in fact, that's the reason I started to subscribe to Netflix in the first place), the central thesis of the paper was focused on four movies: The Graduate, Bonnie & Clyde, The Manchurian Candidate and (in particular) Lawrence of Arabia.  I'm not going to get into the why's and how's of what I argued about these films (if you're curious, go into the comments or slip into my Twitter DM's and I'll share), but suffice it to say I know these movies very, very well, and Lawrence has remained a part of my life ever since in large part because I spent a year focusing on every minute detail of the film, because while I compared the 1962 classic to the three other pictures, it was Lawrence that was the guts of my argument.  So engrained is the film into my psyche, that when I made my bucket list at the age of 25, I only included one "see X film on the big screen" as a requisite for the list, and that was the tale of a complicated World War I colonel.  Thanks to TCM, I got to make this dream a reality last Sunday, and while I've written literally 100 pages worth of thoughts on the film, I haven't shared any of them on this blog, so let's get a review out there for posterity, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead...though seriously-you've never seen Lawrence of Arabia?) The film is 220 minutes long, so trying to summarize it into one paragraph as explanation feels to do it a disservice.  Suffice it to say the film is told in flashback (though it's one extended flashback, so you'd be forgiven for forgetting such a framing device) as we see in the opening moments that a seemingly ordinary man on a morning drive on his motorcycle has been killed, and then suddenly we're at St. Paul's Cathedral, where the man is storied enough to have a bust of him in a place where he literally sits on the ashes of kings.  We learn that Lawrence was a complicated man, as even those who knew him don't really have a way to explain him, and then we are transported into the life of TE Lawrence, as played by a young, beautiful Peter O'Toole.

The film is considered one of the quintessential, undisputed classics of Hollywood cinema for a reason-literally everything works in Lawrence of Arabia, and particularly on the big screen (just an FYI-you can totally see this on Wednesday still in select theaters, and while this isn't a paid plug at all, here's a Fathom Events link if you're interested as I am always willing to shill for a movie this good). The score, sets, cinematography-it's all marvelous.  Freddie Young won one of his three Oscars for lensing this movie, and it shows in the care he brings to the big screen.  The deserts look scorched, blistering in the sun, and he has a remarkable expertise not only with a wide shot, but with the occasional closeup of O'Toole or Omar Sharif's Ali.  The editing is flawless-Anne Coates (who recently died) finds little New Hollywood touches to put into a classic film like Lawrence; look at the way that instead of having an Old Hollywood dissolve between scenes she copies the French New Wave with quick, abrasive cuts between critical scenes, underlining the continued madness of Lawrence, especially in the second half of the film where he's forced to confront his narcissism, latent homosexuality, and bloodlust to varying degrees of failure.  From a sheer craft perspective, the movie rivals pictures like Gone with the Wind and Titanic in getting everything right-few films look as good on all cylinders as Lawrence of Arabia; it's not often that a movie gets ten Oscar nominations and you argue it's too few, but Lawrence gets there (it easily could have gotten an 11th nomination, but if legend is to be believed Phyllis Dalton wasn't submitted by the studio for Costume, and therefore missed out on a certain Oscar).

When an epic is this hot, it's easy to forget the acting, but that would be an insult.  The cast list (all men-Lawrence famously doesn't have any speaking parts for women, who only show up in the occasional crowd scene), reads like a who's who of character actors of the era.  Sharif was the one who won the Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor, and if they were only going to go with one that's probably the right call (Sharif is breathtakingly noble, striking & debonair but never someone who isn't believable as Lawrence's struggling conscience), but you have a smorgasbord of other great turns here.  There's Alec Guinness (in problematic brown face, so the fact that he wasn't cited might be for the best), charming as ever as Prince Faisal, or Anthony Quinn's proud Auda, struggling with modernity.  Even small parts like Jack Hawkins' General Allenby, Jose Ferrer's predatory Turkish Bey, and Claude Rains' glib Mr. Dryden make the film work-this is an epic movie with the casting care of a stage play, every part meticulously fitting to its inhabitant.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the onscreen marvel of Peter O'Toole's Lawrence.  O'Toole is one of the great actors of his generation, but he was never better than in his breakout role.  He instills layers of the character with the mannered walk and sky-blue eyes (you don't need to stretch the imagination to realize that this man was both gay and probably into some kinky shit, as is evidenced by real-life...even though in 1962 showing such a thing would've been impossible onscreen).  There's a madness that sets into his eyes, and a lesser actor wouldn't have been able to use sentences like "I'm extraordinary" without some sort of wink to the audience to show he's in on the joke.  The fact that O'Toole doesn't do that puts this up there with George C. Scott in Patton as a look at what war and death does to a man's sole, and how absolute power can corrupt even the most well-intentioned of leaders.  Lawrence is perfect, but Lawrence himself is a man of great fault, a person who has earned the title of hero, but also of the modern-day reality that comes with such a distinction.