Le désert de la peur

I must confess to being biased towards this film, as I am a grandson of the author and screenwriter. It is extremely pleasing to read that this film has given a lot of pleasure to many who have seen it. Why I think the film succeeds is because it was written by a man who took part in the North African campaign, as a doctor in the RAMC, who had to deal with the human cost of war. People, and how they cope with adversity, is often more interesting than depicting warfare itself. This makes it an unusual war film for the time, to say the least. The character of Captain Anson, so ably played by John Mills, is telling for me as my grandfather sadly did have an alcohol problem later in life. On a lighter note, the terrific final scene in the bar has an amusing story attached to it - apparently, the scene had to be shot five or six times, and as nothing else looked like beer in a glass than, well, beer, poor John Mills had to keep knocking back the beers until the scene was "in the can"!