Meighan Byron's Comments on Sahara
I too, found myself really, REALLY, thirsty for the duration of this film. In fact my water bottle didn’t leave my grip.
I believe that the film does adhere to all categories:
1. The Issues of the War: Bogart as a man who wears a plate of armor during war to protect his reasonable and normally levelheaded existence (ex: when after deliberation he finally let the Italian solider come with them, instead of leaving him to die in the desert)
2. The Nature of the Enemy: example: The captured German solider, his cockiness, his deceit in not telling the Allies that he could understand English and the fact he stabbed the Italian in the back
3. The United Nations: The Allied soldiers were all from different corners of the world French, British, Irish, American and African working together to find water and get back to the front to defeat the Germans.
4. The Production Front: The tank and guns used were well made and could withstand desert heat
5. The Home Front: the sturdiness of the tank and materials used, the remembrance of sweethearts at home
6. The Fighting Forces: The film was about men in the army
I really didn’t see any other theme in the film other than propaganda. To be honest I was ready to walk out on this film. Thinking Oh great another over-the-top, preachy, WWII film that I’ve seen a dozen times already watching AMC with my Dad as a kid. But the thing that stood out for me was the ending. More specifically the fact that the bomb or shell, whatever it was that loosened up the well and caused it to fill up for the German soldiers at the end. It put the kibosh on any notion that the Americans/Allies had the final say on anything. It was pure chance, or perhaps divine intervention that the shell landed where it did and if it were up to Bogart’s character, the Germans would have died of dehydration with a look of disbelieve and horror on their face that they had been duped in to believing they were saved. So in a way it showed how cruel even Americans could be. We saw the real morals of Bogart’s character. He was willing to deceive the Germans out of their only hope, and he was willing to die for that deception.
Stereotypes in this film abound, with the exception of the representation of the minority. The black allied solider was seen as an equal later on in the movie, especially in the well, when he discovers the little drip of water. But when he was first introduced, he was seen as feeble and almost comically inept at detecting friend from foe.
While it’s true that there was not a woman physically in the movie, the way they named the tank Lulubell and referred to it in a feminine manner and chances are that it was produced from a factory of women, made a female presence sort of possible and tangible.