New Picture

At the Front in North Africa (U.S. Signal Corps--Warner) might be more appropriately titled "Darryl Zanuck's War." A Technicolor panorama of the early stages of the North African invasion, it was filmed by 42 Signal Corps photographers under Cinemaestro Zanuck's personal direction. It has all the Zanuck fingerprints: it is flamboyant, melodramatic, sometimes corny, sometimes hysterical--but never dull. A pretty picture, it never approaches the unvarnished realism of the best Nazi or Soviet war films.

The film covers the North African campaign comprehensively. It begins with a review of French and Arab soldiers who greeted the U.S. troops in Algiers, ends with a front-line view of the first major contact of U.S. and German forces: a tank battle at Tebourba. There, from a hilltop that looks little more than a grenade-throw from the battlefield, the camera watches a group of Nazi tanks deployed in a small valley. German cannon, concealed in straw-thatched sheds, fire at approaching U.S. tanks. Then U.S. artillery takes effect; the Nazi tanks turn tail (their tails are painted red to identify them for their own planes). As they crawl away, one Nazi tank is smacked by a direct hit, spins helplessly on its tracks.

But the film's most exciting shots are those of air battles. At the Front has some of the most detailed closeups of attacking planes yet seen on the screen. It shows low-level enemy attacks so close that bombs can be seen falling from the bomb bays. Again & again enemy planes, machine guns spitting, dive head on at the camera. The camera shows the results: Allied trucks flaring up in brilliant orange and red flame, wounded soldiers being picked up, men milling in shock.

These shots and the sound effects are the best things in At the Front. But Zanuck, invincibly Hollywood-minded, tried to dress up the film with arty shots of tank treads, dawns, sunsets, many another ill-placed frippery.

When At the Front reached U.S. cinema houses, Colonel Zanuck himself was not quite satisfied. Wrote he in his log:* "I don't suppose our war scenes will look as savage or realistic as those we usually make on the back lot, but you can't have everything."

CURRENT & CHOICE

The Hard Way (Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson; TIME, March 1).

One Day of War (MARCH OF TIME; TIME, Feb. 8).

Air Force (Harry Carey; TIME, Feb. 8).

They Got Me Covered (Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour; TIME, Feb. 1).

Shadow of a Doubt (Teresa Wright, Joseph Gotten; TIME, Jan. 18).

In Which We Serve (Noel Coward, Bernard Miles, John Mills; TIME, Dec. 28).

-Tunis Expedition (Random House; $2), to be published next month.

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