Sahara-Katrina Heikes
At first I was kind of skeptical of this film, just because I'm not big on old war films, but once it got into it, I realized why we were watching it. I think that this film was defineltyl a propaganda film due to the fact that we (United States) teamed up with our allies to defend our conutry against the Germans. I also think that the film contributed all of the government's themes to make it be classified as a patriotic film as well.
I found it interesting how the group of soldiers felt for the outsiders of their country and made them appart of their own to better themselves. The "frenchie" played a great role in what the soldiers wanted, due to the fact that he did whatever they said and would probabaly die for each and every one of them. When they picked up the German, he appeared to think that he was very "above" the african soldier when he was searching him, and made believe himself as not speaking english. This was believable at the time, but the soldiers caught on to his tactics, and unfortuantly the German killed the frenchie while trying to escape.
I think this was a good film overall and it showed the kind of patriotism it needed for Hollywood during its era. I feel that in the "issues of war," our soldiers and our allies appeared to be fighting for guns and power, but what it really seemed to be, was that they were all fighting for survival, especially water. I feel that when the allies gave up due to thurst, they really weren't "fighting for their countries" like our soldiers were. They gave up because they wanted to LIVE, not DIE for their countries.