As In Which We Serve is propaganda for the classes working together in the Royal Navy. Sahara (1943, directed by Zoltan Korda, 3.6 stars) is an Anglo-American piece of propaganda for unity in fighting the Nazis on the ground. Humphrey Bogart plays Joe Gunn, a sergeant in command of a M3 tank (named Lulubelle). The crew of which includes Dan Duryea and Lloyd Bridges and the usual Hollywood platoon mix of Brooklyn, the Deep South, and Texas). They are separated from their larger unit and retreating toward El Alamein to make a stand when it picks up five British soldiers and a stray Frenchman (Louis Mercier). The British captain (Richard Nugent) accepts that Joe (Bogart) is in command. Already overstuffed, the tank picks up Rex Ingram (Green Pastures, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), a Senegalese (?) sergeant who has an Italian prisoner (J. Carrol Naish). By the time they get to a well, a German pilot, Capt. von Schletow (Kurt Krueger), who strafed the tank and then was shot down is along.

Between the early and late action, the movie grinds to a halt at the well, which has been reduced to a drip. What I find most interesting about this character-development interlude is that it is the French and Italian and African characters who have the most screen time. The African one is shown first as resourceful and then as heroic (at a time when the US military was segregated). The view of Italians as victims of the Germans and not real enemies is strikingly present at the early date of this movie's making. The Nazi is as evil as the one in "Lifeboat."

Nine Allied soldiers defend the well against a whole German battalion with many casualties on both sides. The defense is very reminiscent of digging in against Indian attacks in many a western. (In fact, it inspired "The Last of the Comanches," though the original idea for the story was lifted from a Soviet movie! There was also a remake starring James Belushi.)

Rudolf Maté's cinematography is excellent and Miklos Rosza's music is a little too out-standing—and incongruously jaunty for a desperate drive for water. Then it becomes suitably portentous.

The movie was released by Columbia rather than Warner Brothers, the studio that had Bogart and Duryea under contract. Bogart was very democratic (called "Joe" by his crewmates and putting making a stand up to the motley crew, not to mention treating the African soldier as the expert on the desert), un-neurotic (not at all a Captain Queeg), and plenty decisive.

Ingram's role is an interesting phenomenon. There is nothing Step'n Fetchit about it. He is not only accepted (and befriended by the Texan from Waco played by Bruce Bennet) but saves the good guys twice, first by finding water, second by going after and "neutralizing" an escaped prisoner. (To contrast "Lifeboat" again, Canada Lee was forced into a more stereotypical role, much to the dismay of John Steinbeck, who had written a screenplay in which the Negro character was not stereotyped.) What is odd is that Senegal was a French, not a British colony. There were French Senegalese units. If Sgt. Major Tambul had been in service to his majesty the king of England, he should have been from the Gambia.

The DVD extras are slim: some filmographies and print ads along with trailers for "Bridge On the River Kwai", "The Caine Mutiny", and "The Guns of Navarone."

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Aside from writing about the early all-black musicals, Hallelujah, Green Pastures (Ingram memorably played the Good Lord in the latter), and Cabin in the Sky (in which Ingram switched sides and played Lucifer [Jr.]), I have written about some other early-on Hollywood movies with heroic and unstereotyped black characters, including Arrowsmith and Sergeant Rutledge (both directed by John Ford, who showed more dignified black characters in "The Prisoner of Shark Island"), and. No Way Out (in which Joseph Mankewicz cast Sideny Poitier as a physician in Poitier's first starring role).

©2006, Stephen O. Murray







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