English title: Taxi for Tobruk
During World War II, four French soldiers in a jeep get stranded in the African desert. They take a German prisoner.
Tedious war drama which reportedly was the most watched French film of its year in France. Everything in this film is predictable and cliché. Also, the plot bears considerable similarity with that of the much superior Sahara (1943), a fact which seems to have gone unnoticed in reviews. For justice's sake, the fine cinematography lends the film a certain aesthetical appeal, and the actors are competent. The dialogue, credited to an experienced professional, is mostly painfully uninspired, but does include a curious speech, by a Jewish character, who was against setting the German prisoner free: "But me, I don't forget anything. I'm the nasty one, the spiteful one. I don't like being a cuckold. When I started reading Hegel, you guys were already on Mein Kampf. The French always are a book too late." I wonder whether this speech was created by the writer of the original screenplay, whose mother was Jewish, or by the dialogue man, who was an anti-semite.
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