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A final example of Bolt's appropriation of the Wilson script is the film's concluding fade-out, which evokes Lawrence's alienation as he is driven out of Damascus after the Allied-Arab victory over the Turks. in Seven Pillars, Lawrence ends his account in Damascus. His departure from the city is not described. In the film, as in Wilson's screenplay, Lawrence, having been dismissed by Allenby, is driven out of the city by a chauffeur. Along the road toward Beirut, they pass a group of Bedouin on camels who have abandoned their victory to British administration of the city and are returning to the desert. In the final scene, Lawrence is shown slumped in the passenger's seat. He strains to identify the Arab tribesmen as he passes them in the car. Failing to do so, he stares vacantly ahead as the car speeds past the Arab riders and off into the dust.
These various incidents, and the opening and closing scenes of the film, are inventions directly attributable to Wilson's screenplay. It is not likely that Bolt would have dramatized these scenes, and many others, exactly as Wilson had. They indicate that, despite statements to the contrary, Lean and Bolt had not relied only on Seven Pillars but had in fact seen and relied heavily upon Wilson's script.
Although the Wilson and Bolt screenplays are structurally similar, thematically the two screenplays differ significantly. As Wilson pointed out in the Positif interview:
My version of Lawrence's character was more social and political than that of Robert Bolt, who preferred the psychoanalytical side-the sadistic, masochistic, homosexual aspects of his character. I believe that at the end of the film one confuses the two conceptions and it is not clear for most viewers. Many people have told me: "Lawrence is crazy." But Lawrence was not crazy. He was a very complex and interesting man. [His story] is the tragedy of a man who tried to serve two masters. On one hand, he Wanted to become an Arab but could not. On the other, he was ashamed to remain English. This is what is tragic hor Lawrence, and not the rape by the Turk.15
For example, although the scene of the Cairo meeting between Lawrence and Allenby was retained from Wilson's script, Bolt interpreted it quite differently. In Wilson's version, Lawrence does not take personal credit for the Aqaba victory, reporting that "The Arabs took it. I went along for the ride." In Bolt's version, Lawrence responds egotistically. When Colonel Brighton comments in disbelief that the taking of Aqaba is not possible, Lawrence answers, "Yes it is. I did it."
Similarly, Bolt borrows Wilson's invention of having General Allenby preview Lawrence's dossier, but again he reinterprets it- Bolt uses this scene and others to set up a neurotic character study. In the twenty page sequence in Bolt's script, in fact, Lawrence becomes a highly capricious, traumatized ,and sadomasochist, a man who (Bolt presumes) enjoyed killing. Portrayed as a pathetic and obsessed figure, he is hardly a likely candidate for a pragmatic commander like Allenby to send back into the field. Wilson, by contrast, used the scene to portray Lawrence as a rational, albeit independently--minded, amateur soldier. The scene also provided needed background to explain why Lawrence, only a Second Lieutenant at the time, was used as a liaison officer to the Arabs.
When Lawrence of Arabia premiered in December 1962, it was widely hailed as a superb cinematic spectacle, an unusually literate film epic, but more than one reviewer also commented that Lawrence, as a controversial historical figure, had become "more of an enigma than ever." Even a notoriously apolitical critic such as Andrew Sarris pointed out that the film 's sadomasochistic sensationalism obscured more important political issues.16 It certainly distracted from what many scholars view as the essence of the Lawrence story: his predicament in serving two contradictory masters-Arab nationalism and British colonialism. It would be interesting to speculate on the different portrait of Lawrence and his exploits that would have resulted if Wilson's rather than Bolt's interpretation of Lawrence had prevailed-certainly it would have given audiences a more historically accurate and politically contextualized understanding of the period and the enduring fascination with the Lawrence of Arabia legend.17
Partial vindication for Wilson came a year after the film's release, when the British Screen Writers Guild, in a December 18th, 1963 statement, declared that, "After an exhaustive enquiry lasting many months, during which time all versions of the script and other relevant documents were studied, the arbitration committee upheld Michael Wilson's claim, and ruled that he was entitled to an equal credit with Robert Bolt for the screenplay of Lawrence of Arabia." It was a largely moral victory, however, since the Guild had no means to enforce its ruling, although it did award to Wilson-as it had earlier to Robert Bolt-a Screen Writers Guild plaque for "The Best British Dramatic Screenplay" of the year.
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