VIEWERS' GUIDE: The censor says, "Suitable for all". Who am I to argue?
COMMENT: Although Mason again essays the role of Rommel, he makes only a few brief appearances and plays the character differently from his study in The Desert Fox. Half the time he speaks German with an English accent, and the other half English with a German accent! What is more, he comes closer to the conventional Hollywood portrait of the Nazi officer, playing Wagner in his tent and exchanging "Ve will conquer zee vorld!" dialogue with Richard Burton's sassy British POW.
Of course, these changes are not directly attributable to Mason, but are the work of the scriptwriter and the director, who could not have anticipated that The Desert Fox and Desert Rats would be re-issued as a double bill. All the same, it is disconcerting.
Otherwise, both writing and direction are very smooth. Richard Burton and Robert Newton are ingeniously worked into the cast, Robert Douglas makes an acceptable C.O. and there are some dinky-di Aussies on hand including Chips Rafferty, Charles Tingwell and Michael Pate (most of whose part, he tells me, landed on the cutting-room floor).
The action scenes are excitingly staged, but on the whole the film is a mite disappointing. The direction is too restrained, too soberly realistic, and doesn't go all out for the grand adventure epic like Hathaway's Lives of a Bengal Lancer or Chauvel's 40,000 Horsemen that the film's publicity leads us to expect.
On the other hand, the fictitious narrative involving Newton and Burton, though ingenious, is neither convincing enough nor sufficiently realistic to put the film in the semi-documentary category. So the film tends to fall between two stools. This is unfortunate as within its limits, the film does well, and successfully accomplishes what it sets out to do, namely to provide an entertaining and action-filled if fictitious narrative, set against the realistic backdrop of the siege of Tobruk.
COMMENT: Although Mason again essays the role of Rommel, he makes only a few brief appearances and plays the character differently from his study in The Desert Fox. Half the time he speaks German with an English accent, and the other half English with a German accent! What is more, he comes closer to the conventional Hollywood portrait of the Nazi officer, playing Wagner in his tent and exchanging "Ve will conquer zee vorld!" dialogue with Richard Burton's sassy British POW.
Of course, these changes are not directly attributable to Mason, but are the work of the scriptwriter and the director, who could not have anticipated that The Desert Fox and Desert Rats would be re-issued as a double bill. All the same, it is disconcerting.
Otherwise, both writing and direction are very smooth. Richard Burton and Robert Newton are ingeniously worked into the cast, Robert Douglas makes an acceptable C.O. and there are some dinky-di Aussies on hand including Chips Rafferty, Charles Tingwell and Michael Pate (most of whose part, he tells me, landed on the cutting-room floor).
The action scenes are excitingly staged, but on the whole the film is a mite disappointing. The direction is too restrained, too soberly realistic, and doesn't go all out for the grand adventure epic like Hathaway's Lives of a Bengal Lancer or Chauvel's 40,000 Horsemen that the film's publicity leads us to expect.
On the other hand, the fictitious narrative involving Newton and Burton, though ingenious, is neither convincing enough nor sufficiently realistic to put the film in the semi-documentary category. So the film tends to fall between two stools. This is unfortunate as within its limits, the film does well, and successfully accomplishes what it sets out to do, namely to provide an entertaining and action-filled if fictitious narrative, set against the realistic backdrop of the siege of Tobruk.