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Desert Victory

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Desert Victory
Directed byRoy Boulting
Written byJames Lansdale Hodson
Produced byDavid MacDonald
Production
companies
Distributed byMinistry of Information (United Kingdom)
20th Century Fox (United States)
Release date
  • March 1943 (1943-03)[1]
Running time
60 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

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."[2]

A photograph of a box containing the presentation print of the film Desert Victory, which was to be sent by the Prime Minister to General Montgomery in Tripoli. The box is covered in stickers marked 'urgent'.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Reeves, Nicholas (2004) [1999]. Power of Film Propaganda. A & C Black. p. 173. ISBN 0826473903.
  2. ^ Barry, Iris. "The Documentary Film, Prospect and Retrospect." The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 13:2 (December 1945), 10.
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