The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel
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| The Desert Fox | |
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 DVD Cover |
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| Directed by | Henry Hathaway |
| Produced by | Nunnally Johnson |
| Written by | Nunnally Johnson Desmond Young (book) |
| Starring | James Mason, Cedric Hardwicke, Jessica Tandy, Luther Adler |
| Music by | Daniele Amfitheatrof |
| Cinematography | Norbert Brodine |
| Editing by | James B. Clark |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | October 17, 1951 |
| Running time | 88 min. |
| Country | U.S. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel is a 1951 film with James Mason as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Also in the cast are Jessica Tandy and Leo G. Carroll as Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.
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[edit] Plot
The film shows Hitler's best known general, Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, from the German defeat at El Alamein in 1942 to the time of the July 1944 plot against the Führer. Rommel grows increasingly concerned about Hitler's decision making as the war progresses. Rommel is approached by a group interested in arresting Hitler and replacing him. Rommel is very hesitant and finally insists on meeting Hitler personally in an effort to bring him to reason. Hitler does not listen to Rommel and appears deluded, screaming that weapons in development will turn the tide of the war and change the world for centuries.
Rommel is disillusioned but does not commit to the plot. Things get worse after the Allies land in France on June 6, 1944.
Rommel is charged with treason after the assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. Several other high-ranking officers, including at least one other Generalfeldmarschall, were subjected to humiliating public trials and then executed by being strangled with piano wire hung from meat hooks, but Rommel is given the alternative of suicide, a hero's burial, and the promise that his wife and son will not be imprisoned (or worse). Rommel chooses suicide to protect his family (they were not prosecuted, and survived the war).
The story is narrated, strictly for dramatic purposes, by actor Michael Rennie, who dubs the voice of Colonel Desmond Young, the author of the book The Desert Fox. Although we hear Rennie's voice coming out of his mouth, we actually see Young playing himself in the film. As the film opens, Young is serving in the Indian Army in North Africa and meets Rommel briefly as a prisoner of war; he makes it his mission after the war to discover what really happened to Rommel during the final years of his life — at the time that Young wrote his book, it was believed that Rommel had died as a result of the wounds he had suffered when an Allied fighter strafed his staff car that summer.
[edit] Reception
Mason's performance as Rommel (in this film, not its prequel The Desert Rats), is generally regarded as one of his best, but the film itself was criticized upon release for being too sympathetic to the general, glossing over his initial great admiration of Hitler in order to portray him as a likeable and doomed tragic hero who realizes Hitler's evil and incompetence too late. Unusually for a World War II film, the actors who play Germans (except for Luther Adler, who plays Hitler) do not play their roles with the usual accents encountered in that genre of film; they speak as they did in regular daily life, although none of them were German. (This was also done in the 1930 classic World War I film All Quiet on the Western Front, another film in which nearly all the characters was German.)
[edit] Trivia
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- The beginning of the film shows British Commandos attempting to assassinate Rommel, with about a dozen Germans killed and half a dozen commandos also killed. Actually only about 4 Germans and 1 commando (Geoffrey Charles Tasker Keyes, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for the action) were killed.
- In the film, Leo G. Carroll as von Rundstedt tells Rommel, "Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan", a line quoted without attribution by President John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs Fiasco in 1961.
