DESERT VICTORY(1943)Harold Alexander & Winston Churchill | Documentarty | B&W | Golden Age Film

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Desert Victory is a 1943 film produced by the British Ministry of Information, documenting the Allies' North African campaign against Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps. This documentary traces the struggle between General Erwin Rommel and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, from German and Italian defeats at El Alamein to Tripoli. The film was produced by David MacDonald and directed by Roy Boulting who also directed Tunisian Victory and Burma Victory. Like the famous "Why We Fight" series of films by Frank Capra, Desert Victory relies heavily on captured German newsreel footage. Many of the most famous sequences in the film have been excerpted and appear with frequency in History Channel and A&E productions. The film won a special Oscar in 1943 and the 1951 film The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel took sections of the film for its battle footage.

An early screening in the U.S., at New York's Museum of Modern Art, was for its "The Documentary Film" series, lasting from January through May 1946. This film was shown on April 1-2-3-4, and the Museum offered high praise:

"Before the American documentary had quite learned how to adapt itself to wartime uses, this fine record of the triumphant 1300 mile chase of Rommel's Afrika Korps from El Alamein to Tripoli, by the British 8th Army, came along to celebrate a victory, mark a turning point of the war, and spur on our own official film-makers to report back from the many fronts the thrilling facts of Allied combat. Exceptionally lucid as to the terrain and the action involved, the film also brought home with a shock to the average civilian the reality, the human element, of battle. It was, perhaps, the best and earliest vindication of the documentary film as the powerfully educational and inspiring force it can be."

Cast & Crew

Harold Alexander – Self (archive footage) (as General Alexander)
Winston Churchill – Self (archive footage) (as Mr. Churchill)
Adolf Hitler – Self (archive footage) (as Hitler)
Bernard L. Montgomery – Self (archive footage) (as General Montgomery)
Erwin Rommel – Self (archive footage) (as Rommel)
Claude Auchinleck – Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
Alan Brooke – Self - with Churchill and Montgomery (archive footage) (uncredited)
Alan Cunningham – Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
Joseph Goebbels – Self - Shaking Hands with Rommel (archive footage) (uncredited)
Henry Harwood – Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
J.L. Hodson – Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Arthur Tedder – Self (archive footage) (uncredited)
Wilhelm von Thoma – Self (archive footage)

Directed by: Roy Boulting
Written by: James Lansdale Hodson

Produced by: David MacDonald

Production Companies:

Army Film and Photographic Unit
Royal Air Force Film Production Unit
Distributed by:

Ministry of Information (United Kingdom)
20th Century Fox (United States)
Release Date: March 1943
Running Time: 60 minutes

Country: United Kingdom
Language: English