Hello! I want to ask you one question. What historical mistakes did you notice in the film "Lawrence of Arabia" when, after several years of studying Lawrence, you watched the film again?
Actually the question should be: What was actually historically correct in the film? The film is a masterpiece, but it's a piece of fiction. David Lean did not want a filmed biography, he actually parted ways with the first writer Michael Wilson because Wilson was trying to be historically correct and did not care so much about Lawrence's different controversal traits or character developement.
Robert Bolt treated the Seven Pillars of Wisdom as canon, as Columbia had aquired the film rights for a huge sum of money, despite a lot of doubts about the amount of truth in Lawrence's book even then. So we have a piece of fiction made from another piece of fiction (I honestly think SPoW is literature and not actually a truthful account of what really happened). How much historical truth can possibly be left here?
For a literary adaptaion to work you need to condense the characters of a long book and merge different protagonists, so we ended up with Brighton standing for a dozen British officers who took part alongside Lawrence in the Arab Revolt. Newcombe, Stirling, just to name a few. Ali is a condensation of different Arabs, there was no loyal friend staying at Lawrence's side during the whole campaign, the real Sherif Ali in the book did make a strong impression on Lawrence but only was with him for a relatively short amount of time. However: Ali was present at the botched attempt to blow up the Yarmuk bridge and he was in Azrak during L's subsequent trip to Deraa. (I am not starting on this here, it's too big a subject for tumblr). Prince Feisal is far too old in the film and too little present, Dryden is a conglomerate of all people in the Arab Bureau including Ronald Storrs, Allenby was a rather straight minded general and not as demonic as in the movie, Bentley has just about nothing in common with Lowell Thomas, who was younger than Lawrence when he met him in Jerusalem, and he was never present at any action.
Daud and Farraj are probably closest to their literature counterparts, which is funny because they were most likely not as Lawrence depicted them in his book (they had different names to start with, according to L., but I actually believe they are themselves conglomerates of various people). And of course, there was no quicksand death, the book-Daud dies of cold (!).
This will get a very long piece of writing if I list all the inaccuracies, so I just stick to the accuracies now. Auda is shown quite like the larger than life figure Auda from Lawrence's book, the historical Auda was actually even more cunning and L. never could be quite sure if he would not sell him off to the Turks after all. There was a trip to Aqaba, but the actual battle took place at an outpost and L. fell off his camel and missed it, as we all know. Gasim also gets lost in the desert, but the man L. shoots in order to avoid bloodshed a different person altogether called Hamed.
The massacre at Tafas is quite like in the book, but again: eye witnesses reported that L. actually tried to save prisoners but in his book makes his utter loss of control of his men look like as if he ordered the whole terrible denouement. The scene of L's mental breakdown in the military hospital is also close to its literary source.
What is definitely historically accurate are the costumes by Phyllis Dalton. She really did her research and absolutely got the look of any protagonist perfect. This renders the film's look very authentic. The guns and the train and some of the other technical equipment were not all period accurate (like L's watch for example, or the machine guns), but I am no technical nerd and it did not bother me at all.
Which leads to my conclusion: What the film achieves is that you feel you are present, you sense the heat, you feel the fascination L. must have had for the East, you are part of the excitement and the horror. And even the slog and the exhaustion in places. Lawrence's growing desperation is probably also rather historically correct, unfortunately. The film gives you an impression of the highs and lows of the whole event, and that what makes it so great. And – in the end – much more authentic than an earnest attempt at history would have felt like.
