Out On The North African Front-Humphrey Bogart’s “Sahara” (1943)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Sahara, starring Humphrey Bogart, screenplay by John Howard Lawson who in the post-war period was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to rat out their fellow reds before various congressional investigating committees, 1943

No question Hollywood has gotten a lot of mileage out of war movies, good and bad. Particularly back in World War II when they could combine heroic action with some propaganda in aid of the war effort. The film under review Sahara is such as effort. The action is swift and at times brutal but the heroic action of Sergeant Joe Gunn and his band of Allied brothers is filled with little caveats about what the fighting is all about. The screenplay by John Howard Lawson who later in the red scare Cold War period would be one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to rat out on others who had communist sympathies in the days when that was okay reflects that need to beat the Axis powers in the days when the Soviet Union was a Western ally and the various Communist Parties in the Allied countries were urged to spur on the war effort.      

So much for background. In the foreground this is also an action packed film with Joe Gunn played by Humphrey Bogart who proved he could be a tough guy even without Ingrid Bergman or Lauren Bacall to impress with his prowess. The action is centered on the doings of an American tank crew who had been part of a British offensive against the Germans in North Africa and had been separated in the retreat and was looking to reform elsewhere. Along the line of retreat they encounter at various points a who’s who of Allied soldiers from the Free French to a colonial Sudanese soldier (who had captured an Italian prisoner).

As the title indicates they are in the Sahara and retreat or not they need water which they, under the direction of that Sudanese soldier, eventually find. The fighting against the German enemy takes place at that final watering hole where the small Allied force faces down a battalion of frenzied Germans who also need water. Taking terrible losses but led by the resolute Gunn they are able to make those Germans cry “uncle” and bring them as prisoners of war toward the meeting point for the new offensive (where they found out the famous El Alamein is where the British beat back German General Rommel). Plenty of action and plenty of courage displayed no question. Now just built the second front in Europe.