The Desert Fox Details

Twentieth Century-Fox here casts James Mason — an actor who will be remembered for playing charming villains — as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was known as a professional soldier rather than a Nazi sadist. Filmed not in North Africa but Borrego Springs, California, the film begins as a wartime adventure, then turns into a study of disenchantment as Rommel, beaten by Montgomery's 8th Army, returns to Germany and joins the plot against Hitler. There's a good supporting cast — notably Jessica Tandy as Frau Rommel and Luther Adler as Hitler — and Henry Hathaway directs with solid assurance. Mason was prevailed upon to reprise his role in the sequel, The Desert Rats.

Vivid but scrappy account of the last years of a contemporary hero. At the time it seemed to show a new immediacy in film-making, and was probably the first film to use an action sequence to arrest attention before the credit titles.