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Lawrence of Arabia
The sand flows across the top of the screen like water, it seems to be some kind of grainy ocean stretching away to the impossibly distant, hot horizon. And then there’s a dot and it’s far away, emerging from the heat haze. The camera doesn’t move as the dot slowly grows larger and the music swells. Gradually it takes form, rising and falling. Eventually you can make out that it’s a man riding a camel, in long flowing white robes, straight down the middle of the shot. Closer, closer, the music gets louder and louder, and finally you can see that it’s Lawrence of Arabia on the camel. The quite mind-bogglingy gorgeous aquamarine-eyed face of Peter O’Toole swims into focus. How on God’s earth does this shot manage to be one of the most gripping, iconic and thus parodied images in the history of cinema? That it does tells you everything you need to know about this, one of the very best films ever made, a film so good it can make a shot like this a drawn out sigh of almost excruciating beauty and tension. |
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