La tenda nera

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.

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.

But I'm just being facetious!

Brian Desmond Hurst directs, Anthony Steel and André Morell star, Bryan Forbes and Robin Maugham write, William Alwyn scores the music and Desmond Dickinson photographs in VistaVision Technicolor.

It looks lovely, the Libya locations amazing, yet it's a dull and uneventful movie. Story concerns Capt. David Holland (Steel), who during WWII in the North African campaign gets injured and winds up being nursed by some Bedouin natives. He promptly becomes part of the crowd, falls in love with the Sheik's daughter and instigates a repel the Nazis front with the natives. But what happened next? Holland's brother, Col. Sir Charles (Donald Sinden), travels to Libya to find out.

What he finds is obviously what we find out, that there's an inter racial romance at the heart of the story, some mistrust, loyalties born, a small scale battle and a double edged sword of a finale. It's all very contrived and mismatched, while some of the acting comes dangerously close to being parody supreme. Not good really and the tech guys deserve a better movie, and so do we. Oh well, if nothing else it obviously inspired Lawrence of Arabia. Hee hee hee. 5/10

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......?

Even as a fan of Donald Sinden, this is only an OK offering. The most enjoyable part has to be the amazing locations, set in Libya. The original story was obviously a long novel that was a real struggle to compress into a script