Lawrence of Arabia restoration

1988 restoration

Robert A. Harris supervised the 1988 photochemical restoration, which was released in 70mm to theatres in 1989.

2001 audio clean up for DVD release

Robert A. Harris: From what I've been told by Grover Crisp, they cleaned up the track a bit, but other than that it should be the same. One interesting note: right after the main titles, there was an error in the track. We attempted to get it out in '88 but lost audio with it as we didn't have the digital tools that we have now. If you listen carefully just as Peter gets on the cycle you'll hear (on previous) versions: a "3" pop. This has been eliminated along with some generator noise, which we also could not get out at that time.

2011 restoration

Grover Crisp supervised the 2011 digital restoration, scanned at 8K resolution. It took six months to capture around 325,000 frames. The result was released to theatres in 4K and to Blu-ray . A 4K UHD Blu-ray release has yet to happen.

A longer shot from Lawrence that was also taken in the desert showed a series of fine concentric lines near the top of the frame in a pattern reminiscent of a fingerprint. These, Crisp explained, are cracks in the film emulsion caused by its melting in the desert heat and then healing over. The lines have always been there in the negative and result in an unusual rippling artifact when viewing the movie, but until now there hasn’t been a way to fix it. “We’ve never been able to see this kind of detail before—it’s always been kind of submerged,” he says. “But now, with this 8K scan, it’s more obvious.” Sony commissioned a third party to develop software to minimize or eliminate this distracting artifact for the restored version, which is due out on Blu-ray and in theaters later this year.