No fear of the flame

Lawrence of Arabia

(1962)

This remains perhaps the definitive text on seduction: the seduction of blood, of influence, and especially of renown. Peter O'Toole was never more appealing or scarier, and I was struck on this viewing by how much coded (and sometimes maybe not all that coded) allusion there is to Lawrence's sexuality. Maybe one of the first films to suggest that being gay might not be so terrible.