La bataille de El Alamein

The Battle for El Alamein is a cut above the other Italian WWII movies I've seen. It does have it's flaws though. Poor editing - as our heroic Italian warriors are being overrun by the Brits, everyone is getting ready to die. One guy tenderly caresses a photo of his son and laments that his son will never get to see his father. BOOM BOOM BOOM of explosions and cut to Montgomery casually leaning on on an armored personnel carrier. Only to come back later and find out that they weren't wiped out. What Happened?! There are other annoying cuts but that was the worst.

The APCs are indeed M113s but the British did have something called the universal carrier which looks like an open top, cut down version of a 113. I'm willing to give that a pass.

At one point we are in the British camp and they have real Sherman tanks, long barreled ones but they are Shermans. The Germans have M48s, I think they are. Both sides are painted tan. But in the final battle we have a line of M48s lined up on the ridge. It wasn't until the Italians said they were being attacked that I realized these were supposed to be British tanks. Most confusing.

At any rate, this movie is a cut above the usual Italian war movie and is good enough for a watch. It's something different in that the roles are reversed and the Italians are the heroes and good soldiers and the allies are the faceless mob getting mowed down by the ton. Not that that is a good thing but it's a change of pace.

One of these days the Battles of El Alamein, first and second, will get an epic film like The Longest Day, worthy of the sacrifice of the men who fought it. La Battaglia di El Alamein concentrates on the second battle which comes after Claude Auchinleck was replaced as Eighth Army Commander by Bernard Law Montgomery. English actor Michael Rennie whom I never would have chosen to play Montgomery is the only name the English speaking world will recognize from this cast. Funny thing is that a year earlier Rennie played American Fifth Army commander Mark Clark in The Devil's Brigade and Rennie actually even looks a bit like Clark. In fact I'm not sure his voice was used for Montgomery, it didn't sound like him.

The film is thrown together with some stock footage of other and better war films and it tells the story of El Alamein from the Italian point of view. Poor dubbing doesn't help matters either.

The Italians were there at El Alamein, but it seems as though Mussolini sent his troops in without any armored transport, so when Erwin Rommel orders the retreat of the Axis forces, the Italians had no way to get out of harm's way. Not that the Germans really cared because if that was the case they could fight a rear guard action. Some did and some didn't and this story centers on a small group of soldiers who did not.

As a historical side note La Battaglia di El Alamein does serve a useful purpose. But the film is hardly worthy of the story it tells let alone of the scope of the battle itself.

British forces are seen attacking with armored personnel carriers developed after the war. The M113 APCs were first fielded by the US in 1960 and were adopted by many other armies in the Free World. The boxy shapes of their aluminum hulls are unmistakable to any G.I. like me who served in Vietnam. By this time in the war, the British were well aware of the need to have their infantry attack with their armor to keep enemy infantry from doing what the Italian soldiers are shown doing in the last battle: swarming over the tanks and taking them out with anti-tank mines and Molotov cocktails. Still this is a fairly good movie, one worth watching.

From the British bulletin:

The opposite resistance from the "Divisione Paracadutisti Folgore" is indeed admirable. The rests of the Italian division Folgore have resisted beyond every limit of the human possibilities.

6450 paratroops, at the end of the battle only 340 survived. Some tanks on this movie looks like after war tanks. 25,000 Germans and Italians had been killed or wounded in the battle and 13,000 Allied troops in the Eighth Army. The glorious Division was destroyed during the 2nd El Alamein Battle. During this episode the V an VI Semoventi 75/18 Groups, and the DI Semoventi 90/53 Group operated under the 'Ariete' Division Command.

"The Battle of El Alamein" is to the Italian film industry what "The Longest Day" was to Hollywood – a historically accurate portrayal of a real military action. This Italian-French co-production was filmed with the full cooperation of the Italian Army, and features a star-studded international cast.

Director Giorgio Ferroni spends some time focusing on the officers running the battle to outline the big picture and lend historical credence to his focus, a fictional story of a front-line Italian infantry company which becomes entangled in the campaign. When his Captain (Ettore Manni, "Heroes in Hell") is killed, Lt. Giorgio Borri (Frederick Stafford, "Eagles over London") is forced to take over command of his company. Borri is an inexperienced young officer with a lust for adventure, even if it means putting his men in harm's way. Stafford is never less than totally convincing, the contempt his men feel for him can be shared by the audience. He's a true jerk who learns the hard way what war is all about. Enrico Maria Salerno is his brother, a veteran Sergeant-Major, who shows up unexpectedly and question's the Lieutenant's decisions every step of the way. Rounding out the platoon are several familiar Italian actors, including Sal Borgese, Ricardo Pizzuti, Massimo Righi and Nello Pazzafini.

To add credibility to his story, Ferroni also spends a great deal of time focusing on the situations within both the British and German High Commands. Michael Rennie ("The Devil's Brigade") plays Field Marshal Montgomery with gusto and arrogance, just as well and as memorably as Michael Bates would in "Patton" less than two years later. Also on the British side is the humanitarian Lt. Graham Lt. Graham (George Hilton, "The Liberators"), who protests the massacre of innocent German prisoners in one moving, dramatic scene and winds up volunteering for a suicide mission. He also has a face-to-face encounter with Lt. Borri, which breaks down the barrier between opposing sides in wartime. The men on the front lines are just grunts, there to do their job – the officers, even those on your own side, don't care about you and your welfare; you're just another rifleman.

Finally, Ferroni focuses on the German situation and these may be the finest scenes in the film. Most of the scenes take place in an underground command bunker, a set which has never been so well-captured and looked more realistic. Field Marshal Rommel is played brilliantly by Robert Hossein ("Desert Assault"), who makes Rommel a true skeptic of Hitler with his stern and loud opinions. Rommel was a true soldier, fighting to get the job done, and Hossein's performance is on-target. The supporting German characters are all excellent, too: Gerard Herter ("Battle of the Commandos") is especially good as a dedicated Nazi General; Tom Felleghy ("Kill Rommel!") plays Gen. von Thoma, a skeptic of just about everything, loyal only to Rommel; and Giuseppe Addobbati ("Hell's Brigade") is an incompetent General, who makes a poor tactical error, resulting the destruction of half of the Afrika Korps.

The action sequences are all the more believable and gripping because of the characters embroiled in them. The film's opening is a sequence depicting the ambush of an Italian artillery company, in which Ferroni makes the most of his camera. This sequence is filled with pans, zooms and quick cutting. Machine-gun fire kicks up puffs of dirt everywhere and several soldiers die. The later battle scenes are shot with the same dedication to detail, and for the third act Ferroni brings in dozens of tanks and lots of big explosions. There is one really bad-looking night scene involving some miniature tanks, but that can be virtually ignored because everything else outweighs it. Despite the epic proportions of the action, the well-established characters give them a deeply personal significance.

From the start of the film, Ferroni establishes a mood and feel of intensity and hopelessness. None of the characters are clean-shaven; they are all sweltering in the intense desert sun. One scene in which Lt. Borri must trek through the desert alone without water was especially well-acted. This film takes the story of the heroic grunts in the field and makes us feel for them – feel their thirst, feel their joy when supplies arrive, feel their longing for home when one soldier fondles a picture of his newborn son at home. Carlo Rustichelli's mournful score only adds to the proceedings.

Tie a great cast, epic battle sequences and fine editing and flavor and one has a strong, entertaining war film. This ranks with the classics. Not be missed!