Thursday, January 1, 2026

Movies I Have Seen - January 2025 (1 movie)

 

1 Movie 


Lawrence Of Arabia. 1962, Starring 


The crew consisted of over 200 people. Including cast and extras, over 1,000 people worked on the film.[18] Members of the crew portrayed minor characters. First assistant director Roy Stevens played the truck driver who transports Lawrence and Farraj to the Cairo HQ at the end of Act I; the sergeant who stops Lawrence and Farraj ("Where do you think you're going to, Mustapha?") is construction assistant Fred Bennett, and screenwriter Robert Bolt has a wordless cameo as one of the officers watching Allenby and Lawrence confer in the courtyard (he is smoking a pipe).[19] Steve Birtles, the film's gaffer, played the motorcyclist at the Suez Canal; Lean is rumoured to have provided the cyclist's voice shouting "Who are you?" Continuity supervisor Barbara Cole appeared as one of the nurses in the Damascus hospital scene. It may be the longest theatrical film with no female speaking roles. Women appear in crowd scenes or as extras.


Hollywood Suite, 1 January 2026, with Dr. Connie Luther. Soundtrack: "



Anachronisms: 

When Lawrence arrives at the Suez Canal, the ship which comes into focus is a late-'50s Blue Funnel Line ship.

The airplanes used during the raid were DH Tiger Moths. They did not go into production until late 1929-early 1930.

In his interview of Faisal, Jackson Bentley mentions that "certain influential men" in America want their country to join World War I. However, this conversation occurs after the fall of Aqaba, which was in July 1917; by that time, the US had already been in the war for several months.

During the attack on Aqaba, a Turkish soldier is seen with a Browning M1919 machine gun. Which would not have been in use at the time of the Arabian revolt (1917) and it would not have been used by the Turks.

When Allenby and Lawrence visit the officers' bar in Cairo, immediately after Allenby says "Shall we go outside?", a bright yellow American school bus is briefly visible driving by the distant window in the right-middle portion of the frame.

In the attack on Aqaba, a white pickup truck can be seen in the background parked next to some white buildings.

Following Lawrence's memorial service, the view of the front of St Paul's Cathedral shows that the left-hand clock face (the North) is missing. This was actually destroyed during the Second World War, which did not begin until 4 years after T.E. Lawrence died.

Contrail over Damascus when Allenby in discussing the Arab Council on his balcony

When Lawrence reaches the Suez Canal, a steam freighter passing through blows its whistle. The whistle is an electric siren whistle. In 1917 most merchant ships were steam-powered. The ship's whistles would also have been steam-powered and would have given out a bellowing sound, not a piercing shriek as from an electric whistle as seen in the film. A steam whistle would have also emitted a great, highly-visible jet of steam upon being used.

At 1 hour 48m 56 seconds Auda Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn) is smashing telegraphic equipment. In front of Auda Abu Tayi is a vacuum tube of approximately 1940 vintage and on the left hand side of the screen is a SupetHet radio receiver again of approximately 1940's vintage (with the tuning capacitor half open). Although vacuum tubes had previously been invented (1904) it is most unlikely that these would have been used in telegraphic equipment in Arabia in 1916. The Morse code heard when Auda Abu Tayi smashes the equipment is of an electronic nature again not available in 1916.

At the end of the film, the army truck passing Lawrence's car in the opposite direction (after the motorcycle passes by) is a modern cab-forward design not seen in that era.

In the opening scenes set in 1935, not only are three phase electricity cables visible in many shots, but a color UHF television transmitter is also visible over Lawrence's right shoulder.

Just after intermission, when Lawrence strikes a pose atop the train car for Jackson Bentley's camera, Bentley exclaims, "Yes sir, that's my baby!" But the Arabs attacked the Hejaz railway in 1917, and that phrase likely wouldn't be popular until 1925 when the Walter Donaldson/Gus Kahn song of the same name was composed and recorded.

















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