Rex Ingram – Movie Musings

Bogart does desert warfare, in this tense, very well-made war film both men-on-a-mission and a siege film

Director: Zoltán Korda

Cast: Humphrey Bogart (Sgt Maj Joe Gunn), Bruce Bennett (Waco Hoyt), J. Carrol Naish (Giuseppe), Lloyd Bridges (Fred Clarkson), Rex Ingram (Sgt Maj Tambul), Richard Nugent (Captain Jason Halliday), Dan Duryea (Jimmy Doyle), Carl Habord (Marty Williams), Patrick O’Moore (Bates), Louis Mercier (Frenchie), Guy Kingsford (Stegman), Kurt Kreuger (Captain von Schletow), John Wengraf (Major von Falken)

Sahara was ripped from the headlines: with the war still in full swing. So much so, it not only told a tale of a battle effectively still being fought but is also perhaps the only American film in existence to credit a Soviet film for providing the original story. It’s 1942 and the British army are in full retreat from Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Among them is Sgt Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart) and his tank Lulubelle, one of a small group of American tanks getting some real life combat experience with the Brits. Heading South through the desert, Gunn and his crew, Waco (Bruce Bennett) and Joe (Dan Duryea), pick up a motley collection of Allied soldiers led by Captain Dr Halliday (Richard Nugent) including Sudanese sergeant Tambul (Rex ingram) and his Italian prisoner Giuseppe (J. Carrol Naish). All of them are caught between two enemies: the Germans and the complete lack of water in the desert.

Sahara is an exciting, assured war film that combines a ‘men on a mission’ set-up with a classic ‘base under siege’ setting. Our heroes eventually find themselves at a dried-up desert well and the target of a desperately thirsty German battalion. Gunn decides to hold the dry well to slow the German advance down, fighting a gruelling siege, desperately waiting for relief, as the battle takes a terrible burden. This is Boys Own Adventure stuff, but told with a genuinely affecting sense of duty and sacrifice, as our heroes knuckle down in impossible circumstances.

At the heart of it, Bogart delivers exactly the movie star charisma the film needs while. Rudolph Maté’s photography is extraordinary, transforming the Californian desert into the African sands. Sahara brilliantly understands the importance of resources in the desert, and Korda captures perfectly the sweaty, sand-covered desperation for liquid. Sahara is tense, exciting and surprisingly hard-hitting with a strong cast.

What it really is of course, is a celebration of the attitudes that separate the Allies from those nasty Nazis. The Allies are a smorgasbord of nationalities, all of whom are shown (after some clashes) to work together with respect, admiration and a shared sense of purpose. Richard Nugent’s medical officer modestly defers leadership to the tank-and-combat experience of Bogart’s sergeant – no awkward arguments of seniority. Despite the collection of Americans, Brits, a South African, a Free Frenchman, a Canadian and a Sudanese sergeant, there is almost no trace of either national or racial clashes.

These men work in partnership, deferring to other’s areas of expertise to survive. Rex Ingram – excellent as Sergeant Tambul – instantly proves himself invaluable with his survival knowledge and ability to locate water. It’s Tambul who is at the heart of a tense search for any moisture in the seemingly dried up well our heroes hole up at, and later he is pivotal in the defence of the well. Saraha has a marvellously low-key but affecting scene of cross-cultural understanding as Tambul and Bruce Bennett’s Texan Waco jokingly compare outlooks on the world that are far more similar than they expect.

The message here is clear: teamwork, respect and the ‘dignity of freedom’ gives the Allies the moral edge over the Axis. The supportive respect, good humour and unflashy bravery of the Allies who get on with it and put duty first while respecting the rules of war is contrasted with the Germans. Bogart may flirt with the idea of abandoning Giuseppe in the desert (to preserve their water supply) but of course, when push comes to shove, he won’t (as Waco and Jimmy suspected he wouldn’t). Later, Bogart will even share the same limited water ration with their German prisoners.

Compare and contrast with the Germans. Their main representative, captured pilot von Schletow (played with a wonderfully smug viciousness by Kurt Kreuger), is portrayed as an instinctive racist (he’s the only character to make any slur towards Tambul), a bully and fanatic. There’s very little trace of decency in him: he’s confrontational, two-faced and dripping with nationalist superiority. The other Germans we see aren’t much better: a German soldier turns on his companion for a drop of water, a senior German officer breaks on a truce and the Germans fight as individuals rather than a supportive unit.

Caught in the middle? The Italians, represented by Giuseppe. J. Carrol Naish is excellent (and Oscar-nominated) as a soldier a million miles from Kreuger’s fanatic: a family man who keeps his word and just wants to go home. Naish has two knock-out scenes: the first a desperate pleading to Gunn to not be left to certain death in the desert and the second a contemptuous denunciation of German fanaticism to von Schletow: as he puts it, it’s a job to the Italians but a way of life to the Germans. Perhaps it was easier (with America’s large Italian population) to give the Italians more of a pass, but it allows the film to suggest there is some hope that behind the fanatics stood many regular people (something it’s hard not to see mirrored in the desperate German soldiers).

Sahara marshals all of this into a final siege that threatens to head the film into very dark territory indeed. Death is a constant in Sahara: the film opens with a view of the wreckage of battle, the unforgiving harshness of the desert is constantly stressed and we are shown repeated images of makeshift graves as bodies pile up and it becomes clear no-one is safe. Many heroic deeds have fatal outcomes and there is a hardened realism to the fighting. Like the Allies, the viewer ends up hoping for a miracle. It’s makes for a gripping and overlooked war film, that provides a genuinely hard-hitting taste of how unforgiving war can be. Tense, well-filmed and exciting it’s a little gem.

Overlooked but delightful comedy with three star actors at the absolutely charming top of their game

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Cary Grant (Leopold Dilg), Jean Arthur (Nora Shelley), Ronald Colman (Professor Michael Lightcap), Edgar Buchanan (Sam Yates), Glenda Farrell (Regina Bush), Charles Dingle (Andrew Holmes), Clyde Fillmore (Senator Boyd), Emma Dunn (Mrs Shelley), Rex Ingram (Tilney), Leonid Kinskey (Jan Pulaski)

Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant) is in a heck of a fix. A passionate campaigner for worker rights, all fingers point straight at him when a local factory burns down leaving an unpopular foreman dead. Dilg rather than wait in the slammer for an inevitably (fatal) sentence, he escapes and find refuge in the country cottage of former schoolmate Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur). Problem is Nora has sublet her cottage to straight-as-a-die legal professor Michael Lightbody (Ronald Colman), in the running for the Supreme Court. With Dilg passing himself off as a gardener, can he and Nora convince the ultra-serious Lightbody there has been a miscarriage of justice?

The Talk of the Town is a hugely enjoyable comedy with more than a pinch of social commentary, that gives three charismatic stars tailor-made roles under the assured hand of a skilled director. It’s a great mix of genres: it opens like a dark thriller, segues into an odd-couple-house-share comedy via a romantic-love-triangle, transforms again into a slightly zany detecting comedy with road-trip vibes and wraps up as courtroom drama with a Capraesque speech and happy ending. The fact all this hangs masterfully together makes The Talk of the Town stand out as a consistently surprising and enjoyable comedy, full of zip and smart, funny lines.

Stevens choreographs the film superbly, specifically in its initial set-up where the three lead characters weave in and out of each other’s lives in the house. Initially Grant hides in the attic – signalling from a window his desire for food (an excellent running gag is the amount Grant’s character enthusiastically eats), with Arthur going to acrobatic lengths to hide his presence from Colman. You can imagine other films getting an entire hour out of this: The Talk of the Town is brave enough to shake-up this set-up within twenty minutes, as Grant nonchalantly wanders downstairs to introduce himself, quick thinkingly introduced as a gardener by an as-surprised-as-us Arthur.

It’s a surprise, but a perfect one – after all it would be hard easy to consider Colman’s character a head-in-the-clouds dullard if he had been fooled for long by Arthur’s increasingly unusual behaviour. And The Talk of the Town needs us to like and respect all three of these characters, to root for all of them. What better way, but to get them rooting for each other?

The odd houseshare comedy that takes over Talk of the Town is all about its principles effectively falling in love with each other (there is a thruple version of Talk of the Town waiting to be made). Grant learns to respect Colman’s self-effacing, shy wit. Colman learns to enjoy Grant’s instinctive intelligence. Both of them find deeper feelings growing for Arthur’s feisty Nora, just as she finds herself drawn to the charm, good nature and honesty of the other two. Talk of the Town becomes delightful as we watch the three of them eat meals together, play chess and chat about the law late into the night. Few films have shown as skilfully friendships organically growing.

The tension that takes over is whether outside forces will tear this friendship apart. Namely, if Colman finds out Grant’s identity will he swop from buying Borscht for his friend (sweetly, Colman remembers a throwaway comment about exactly how much he likes it) to being duty bound to shopping him to the cops? Grant and Arthur are aware of the danger: they’ve been drop-feeding references to the unsound accusations against Grant throughout, all while desperately making sure he never sees Grant’s mugshot photo in the papers (right up to pouring eggs over the front page) – the way Colman eventually finds this out is a beautifully done reveal.

All of this entirely relies on three actors at the top of their game. Grant seems, at first, an odd choice for a worker’s rights campaigner, but this is one of his lightest, most overlooked performances: wry, knowing and playful. Arthur is excellent as the electric centre of this love triangle, energetically torn between two very different men and terrifically determined under the occasionally scatty surface. Colman is dapper, upper-class charm to a T, but full of egalitarian charm and surprisingly willing to begin to question his own views in conversation with others.

Colman’s initial rigidity is represented – in a plot point that’s slightly on-the-nose (literally) – by his goatee, which he wears as a metaphorical shield between him and the world (it’s also another neat running gag, as it garners endless unflattering comments). When Colman inevitably shaves it off (a moment so overplayed, his trusted valet breaks down in tears at the sight) it’s a sign that he has accepted there is more to the law than just its letter. It plays into the film’s final shift, as Colman fills the final act with a passionate speech to silence a crowded courtroom ready for a judicial lynching (hilariously littered with direct quotes from his Grant’s character).

Much to my surprise, the social commentary and democratic praise never outweighs the comedy. The film gives space to earnest debate, but still has time for a madcap chase that ends with Colman hiding up a tree from police dogs. Stevens successfully mixes styles, from Fritz Lang thriller to Preston Sturges comedy to a mix of Hitchcock and Capra. Stevens fuses all these together perfectly, making a film funny, exciting when it needs to be, but always engaging with characters you really root for.

The Talk of the Town is overlooked but a very well-made treat and an exceptional showcase to three charismatic, hugely engaging actors. It marries comedy and social commentary extremely well (it even has a Black character in Rex Ingram’s wise valet whose race is incidental to his personality, quite a thing in the 40s) and bowls along with a huge sense of fun. It’s definitely worth seeking out.