El secreto del capitán Holland

There really isn't much positive to say about the film other than that it uses a lot of location shots and is colourful.

The main actors, most of whom had their moments of stardom at different times had difficulty making much of their parts, even Andre Morrell. Anton Differing and Frederick Jaeger were believable as both were German speakers and seemed to have a whale of a time without the constraints of acting in their second language, English.

The film is worth a watch but not one that I'd make an effort to see again.

Brian Desmond Hurst made many great films but was not much of a director. He often took care of immensely great and interesting stories with great action and fascinating intrigue and had a knack for getting outstanding music to them as well, but his films are annoyingly impersonal, as if he didn't care about the actors but just focused on getting it all done and the story told. This is one of those films, typical of him, telling a great story, featuring characters of considerable interest, but coming out with only a very conventional and almost expressionless product. He just couldn't dramatize.

There are many other assets to this film, though, like the photography with the epic and extremely romantic environment, the most romantic scenes taking place in the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre, the most spectacular part of the film, and dwelling long on a very comprehensive Libyan wedding among the bedouins. We don't have many films from Libya, this is from long before the days of Khadaffi and Isis and all that jazz, and what you are shown is a paradise among the bedouins in the shadow of the dramatic turnings of the second world war by Tobruk and El Alamein.

What especially lifts this film is the splendid music by William Alwyn adding another dimension of colours to the already resplendently colourful film, enhancing especially the romantic scenes with that extra touch which the actors and dialogue are not able to provide.

The script is by Bryan Forbes together with the author of the novel, Robin Maugham, and there is nothing wrong with the script, the saga being so humanly interesting as it is, but such a tale could have been made so much more of. It's the stuff of Lawrence of Arabia, Rudolf Valentino's sheiks and even of Charlton Heston's Moses in the desert.

Of course you come to think of Hurst's other films, like "Dangerous Moonlight" (with the Warsaw Concerto), "Simba" (of Mau-Mau in Kenya), the Malta Story with Alec Guinness, Hungry Hill and The Lion has Wings, and they all suffer from the same thing: great stories, but crippled by lack of flesh to the bones, as if the director thought the actors were of secondary importance to the epic.

Nevertheless, it's definitely worth giving a chance, for its exotic settings, its great story (with a surprisingly apt end), its splendidly coloured desert environments, its romance among the ruins, and its very vivid music, the most alive part of the film.

Intriguing adventure/WWII yarn dealing with a wealthy heir (Donald Sinden) is worried when his eldest brother (Anthony Steel) fails to return home from North African campaign , as Rommel's Africa Korps have vanquished the British army in Tobruk . As brother Donald Sinden is packed off to discover that he's fallen for a Sheik's (Andre Morell) daughter (Anna Maria Sandri) and thrown in an adventurous life with a Bedouin tribe in the Libyan African desert.

Drama , mystery , intrigue , romance story in which the alleged heir of a fortune is worried about the eldest sibling who occupies the ancestral seat has disappeared during the African campaign and then he sets out in his quest . Well written by actor/director Bryan Forbes and Robin Maughan , based on his novel . Pleasantly filmed romantic drama , all very stiff-upper-lip , here outstanding a pretty good main and support cast . As stiff Anthony Steel gives a passable acting as the British soldier who joins the Bedouin and romances the native chief's daughter , subsequently marrying her and then he helps the tribe fight off a Nazi attack . Along with the beautiful Italian actress who had a brief career, Anna Maria Sandri , giving a below-average acting . Other actors appearing as Donald Sinden and Andre Morell provide better performances . Furthermore , prestigious British secondaries as Donald Pleasence , Ralph Truman , Anthony Bushell , Michael Craig , Anton Diffring in his usual Nazi role, Bryan Forbes himseld as a dying Soldier and Nanette Newman uncredited as Mabrouka's voice.

It packs a colorful and sunny cinematography by Desmond Dickinson , shot on location in Roman ruins, Sabratha, Libya and Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire, England, UK . It conatins an atmospheric and evocative musical score by William Alwyn ,adding Arabian sounds . The motion picture nicely produced by Earl St. John , being professionally directed by Brian Desmond Hurst , though I has some failures . Brian arranges to flatten the interest out of potentially thrilling material . Hurst was a craftsman , probably best known to modern audiences as the director of exotic adventures , WWII , Christmas and controversial films . He made what is generally considered to be Ireland's first sound film, Irish Hearts (1934). Two years later he made a film that caused the authorities in his native Northern Ireland to forbid it from being shown there : Ourselves Alone (1936), a story of the 1921 Irish rebellion against British rule , being the English language equivalent of the name for the Irish political party "Sinn Féin", it was banned in his native Northern Ireland at the time of its release in 1936, although it has since achieved critical and is shown in museums and other public access points in Northern Ireland . And he , subsequently , went back his Irish roots in other films as Hungry Hill (1947) . Hurst ran into censorship troubles again with his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart (1934), which was prohibited in many areas of Great Britain for being "too horrible" for public exhibition. These incidents didn't deter Hurst from making controversial films, however. He turned out the dark On the night of the fire (1939) in 1939, regarded as one of the first British "noir" films . During the war Hurst made such films as Dangerous Moonlight (1941), a well-regarded story of an American newswoman in England who falls in love with an exiled Polish pianist who wants to return to his country to fight the Nazis , this film also popularized the musical number "Warsaw Concerto". After the war he made what he regarded as his favorite film, Theirs Is the Glory (1946), about the disastrous British-American wartime operation at Arnhem in Holland, which became Britain's biggest-grossing film for almost a decade . The film he is most famous for results to be Scrooge (1951) with Alastair Sim, considered by critics and audiences alike to be the best and definitive film version of Charles Dickens' classic novel "A Christmas Carol" . He is also noted for his World War II film The lion has wings (1939) . Among his other successes was Malta story (1953), about the defiant resistance of the military and civilian populations on the island of Malta against relentless Nazi bombing during the war, and Simba (1955), about the Mau-Mau rebellion against British colonial rule in Kenya . And other movies as ¨Trottie true¨, ¨The Mark of Cain¨ , ¨Behind the mask¨, and ¨Dangerous Exile¨ about the French Revolution . He retired in 1963 after "John Millington Synge's Playboy of the Western World" which was his final picture , and died in London in 1986.

An unfairly underrated movie, the rating of which not reflecting its genuine qualities.

The screenplay is brilliantly constructed, and may baffle the viewer ;when the movie begings ,Sinden seems to play the principal ,but after some twenty minutes,Anthony Steele becomes the true star ; his diary is a good idea. The returns to present are rare but thoroughly relevant ;till the very end ,one does not know what has become of the missing brother .

Falsely called "war movie", it's closer to melodramatic exotic adventures ; WW2 is only a background and the historical events are only tidings (Rommel's victory , then El Alamein) ; the German intervenes in the Bedouin's camp and the director takes advantage of the ruins (the film almost entirely filmed on location) but it only leads to a small ambush.

The essential concerns the relationship between a handsome British officer and a gorgeous bedouin girl;Please do not compare it to epics such as "Lawrence of Arabia " ; its purpose is to depict the huge gap between the Bedouins' humble life and the British civilization ,which creates the final dilemma. It may delude for some time ,when David asks the girl to follow her in his land of pastures of plenty ,but would have it been possible even if......?

"The Black Tent" begins with a man in Britain being told that his brother, the heir to the family fortune, MIGHT still be alive in North Africa--over a decade after he was assumed to have died fighting in WWII. However, when he tracks down the Bedoins who sheltered and healed him during the war, they deny having any other knowledge of him. After he leaves, however, he finds his brother's diary--someone had stuck it in his belongings in order to let him know the truth. Most of what follows is a flashback--flashbacks where you learn that the brother was like a son to the Chief and that he even eventually married the man's daughter! But the story goes beyond that--he even organized the locals into a small guerrilla army which attacked Axis troops! What happened next? See the film.

By far the best thing about this movie is the location shooting. The amazing ruins at Sabratha, Libya serve as a backdrop as is the nearby desert. However beautiful this is, however, the story itself isn't that captivating. Now it isn't because the idea is bad--it's not. But he execution seemed very plodding and flat. The writing could have been better and the actors a bit more charismatic. Still, a watchable adventure tale that is reasonably watchable.