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Document & Drama in Desert Victory

Desert Victory (1943) is a "campaign film " which documents the battle between Rommel's desert forces and the United Kingdom's troops for North Africa. The predicament of the British filmmakers (David Macdonald, director, William Allery, music, and T.H. Hodson, narration) interested me greatly. While reporting the documentary "facts" about the successful North African campaign, it was also their assignment to create a dramatic image of war, which would inspire confidence and enthusiasm among the folks back home. Throughout the film, I kept asking myself which will win out, reportage or drama? After the first showing of Desert Victory in the United States, Manny Färber of the New Republic (April 12, 1943) praised it for its relative lack of didacticism. In its understatement, Färber found it especially in contrast with "the Russian documentaries where the heavy hand of moral purpose is always teaching you a lesson." Somewhat familiar with pre-war English documentaries, Färber traced this subtle use of film as film back to John Grierson and his circle, which included Macdonald. Grierson's teams had discovered a hard-earned truth that "emotion and interest in a film have more chance of taking hold when the event is shown at such length that it can speak for itself." (In all fairness to the Russians, it should be added that Farber's strictures against the "Russian films" can legitimately be applied to Frank Capra's extravaganzas in the Why We Fight series which began to appear in 1943.) Desert Victory indeed has the appearance of realism. Music is used throughout the film to build suspense between scenes and to accentuate the pace of the drama of the North African campaign, yet it is the "actual" sounds of trucks, planes, tanks, individual rifle bolts slamming home, or of men digging their holes, that we remember. The intended effect is obvious. Because our attention is fixed on actual sounds rather than a rich