Mightiest adventure drama set in Libyan desert during WWII dealing with an Allied lost patrol battling Germans

ma-cortes

Wartime classic film with powerful direction by Zoltan Korda including scenarios set in Lybia desert but filmed in Southern California desert, Palm Springs, and Yuma, Arizona , being based upon an incident in the Soviet film ¨The Thirteen¨ directed by Mikhail Romm and made about six years prior to this movie . "In June, 1942, a small detachment of American tanks with American crews, joined the British Eighth Army in North Africa to get experience in desert warfare under actual battle conditions. History as proved that they learned their lesson well" . While the WWII raged in Europe American/British troops were fighting in a far part of the world , North Africa . Small solitary patrols moved over the vast Libyan desert that seemed on fire with the sun . The molten sky gloated over them . The endless desert wore the blank look of death . Yet these men marched on without a murmur , fighting an unseen German enemy who always struck in the dark . Sergeant Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart replaced Brian Donlevy for this Columbia Studios film whilst Donlevy in turn replaced Bogart on the same studio's ¨Once Upon a Time¨ and even originally offered to Gary Cooper, who turned it down) and his tank (called Lulubelle" is a M3 Lee tank) crew (Bruce Bennett, Dan Duryea) pick up five British soldiers , a Frenchman and a Sudanese man (Rex Ingram) with an Italian prisoner (J. Carrol Naish who was nominated for Oscar) crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their army after the fall of Tobruk . A brave group of American and British soldiers lost in the desert are shot by the Germans , one by one and some battered fighting men battle it out to the finish . Dead the official commander they are ruled by the sergeant , then arise boiling passions in the burning sands . The bunch works together to vanquish a much larger Nazi army that wishes the same water well that they have . ¨The film is dedicated to the IV Armored Corps of the Army Ground Forces, United States Army, whose cooperation made it possible to tell this story."

The motion picture gets brief psychological remarks about diverse characters , and although is completely developed on the wide desert , the tale results to be a little claustrophobic . Produced by Columbia Pictures with a script by the black-listed John Howard Lawson and as executive producer Harry Joe Brown . Philip MCDonald (story's author being based the movie) had been recruited in the British cavalry during WWI (1917) and he ulteriorly wrote an intrigue and suspense tale , adding his war memories and taking an incident based on the Soviet Photoplay "The Thirteen" . The film contains Miklos Rozsa's powerful and emotive musical score . Very good cinematography in white and black by Rudolph Mate was nominated for Academy Award . The Sahara desert in this movie was portrayed by the California desert's Borego Desert which is located in the Imperial Valley, north of the American-Mexican border as well as Brawley, Imperial County, California ; Chatsworth, California and the sand dunes of Yuma, Arizona . Two thousand tons of sand were transported to the filming set in order to create the feel of loose desert sand, the shadows were spray-painted on desert hills to make them be seen more clearly by the audience ; moreover, sand dune ripples were created by spray-painting the sand with light paint and then turning on a wind-machine.

Magnificent direction by the British Zoltan Korda and excellent interpretations make this a very good film . This particular story was former and subsequently remade and reworked several times : The first time by John Ford in ¨The lost patrol¨ with Victor McLagen and Boris Karloff ¨ set in Mesopotamia ; ¨Bataan¨ by Tay Garnett with Robert Taylor in Philippines jungle ; ¨Last of Comanches¨ made by the same studio about a decade later , was loosely based on this movie , realized by Andre De Toth with Broderick Crawford in Califonia desert ; and even part of ¨Flight of Phoenix¨ by Robert Aldrich in Sahara desert . The motion picture will appeal to cinema classic moviegoers .

score 7/10

ma-cortes 13 June 2012

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2627185/