"Lawrence of Arabia" won seven Academy Awards in 1962, including best picture and director (David Lean). Did it really deserve to beat "The Longest Day," "The Music Man," "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" for the top prize? It got some socko reviews back then. Variety called the $15-million production "a king-size adventure yarn." But those were the days when most film-goers confused best picture with big picture, especially Oscar voters. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times insisted that an intimate little film, "A Taste of Honey," was really the best film of 1962 and he dismissed "Lawrence of Arabia" as "a lot of sand and fury signifying little or nothing about Lawrence."
Was Crowther right? Well, indeed, the movie reveals little about who Lawrence really was, but that was standard operating procedure for sugar-coated Hollywood bios back then. Furthermore, much of what was on the wide screen was fictional (the attack on Aqaba) or inaccurate (mass desertions by his Arab soldiers). Does that matter?
Crowther thought so and continued to blast away at it: "'Lawrence of Arabia' is, in the last analysis, just a huge, thundering camel-opera that tends to run down rather badly as it rolls on into its third hour and gets involved with sullen disillusion and political deceit." Crowther wasn't alone. Also among its haters was Andrew Sarris, the then-Village Voice scribe who's venerated today as a god among film critics.
Nonetheless, "Lawrence of Arabia" reigns in the top 10 of greatest movies ever made as listed by the American Film Institute (ranked No. 5 in 1997 and No. 7 in 2007).
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