Growing up in the 90s as a young child who was really into film, I was told two things about Lawrence of Arabia by my elders, usually in tandem. First, that it was A Truly Great Film, indisputably so, even among the Greatest Ever Made. And second, that despite its urgent and inarguable Greatness, I wasn’t to rush to see it – not until I had an opportunity to do so in a cinema. It wasn’t even worth watching on a television screen, they said, for that would cut its brilliance in half, or worse: like having your first glass of champagne and mixing it with water.
And so I waited. In Johannesburg, where I lived, there was no such thing as repertory cinema: my first experience of seeing a “classic” on the big screen was a 20th-anniversary re-release of Grease. Eventually, my patience ran out: when I noticed a late-night airing of David Lean’s horizon-wide historical drama on the TV schedule, I junked the advice I had hitherto been given, and stayed up to watch it on our boxy 14in Sony. I have no doubt that it was unfortunately cropped, letterboxing rarely being the favoured broadcast option in that dinkier age of television sets. But I don’t really remember, largely because, with all those caveats and warnings in mind, I was enthralled by the film anyway.
