Lawrence Of Arabia

1 9 6 2 (UK)

When my dad took me to see this film at the cinema in Mexborough my tiny schoolboy mind was much puzzled that nobody else noticed the glaring continuity error. Within seconds of the curtain going up, Lawrence dies on his motorbike at the beginning of the film! And yet, unperturbed by his own death he goes off to fight in World War I in the desert . . .

Throughout the war, Lawrence keeps returning to Cairo and complaining that he won't go back to the desert because he's not fit. Then someone gives him a drink or a cigarette and off he tears again into the sand to kill more Turks. 

He does this three or four times until everyone gets so pissed off with him that they send him back to England so he can ride motorcycles around all the time (even though he actually killed himself doing this very thing at the beginning of the film). 

There are also several thousand camels, miles and miles of sand and loads of really big explosions. Add a bombastic Maurice Jarre score, pumped-up Technicolor™ and a few dignified thespians to brown-up as Arabs (Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn) and you have a package designed for Oscars to be flung at! The end.