Lion of the Desert

As you all may recall from last week, I had said that Syrian American film producer and director, Moustapha Akkad, made two films about Muslims. I reviewed his first one, "The Message," last week, and now for this week, I will review the second film he directed and produced, "Lion of the Desert," which came out in 1981. Here are the plot summaries that you can find on IMDB:

"In the Fascist Italy Pre-World War II of Benito Mussolini, played by Rod Steiger, the cruel General Rodolfo Graziani, played by Oliver Reed, is directly assigned by Il Dulce to fight in the colonial war in Libya to vanquish the Arab nation. However, his troops are frequently defeated by the national leader Omar Mukhtar, played by the late Anthony Quinn, and his army of Bedouins. But the Butcher of Ethiopia (Graziani) and Libya uses a dirty war against the natives, slaughtering children, women and aged people, to subdue Mukhtar. Omar Mukhtar is an Arab Muslim rebel who fought against the Italian conquest of Libya, just prior to World War II. It exposes the savage means by which the conquering army attempted to subdue the natives. Between two world wars, a struggle for freedom took place in the African desert. This movie is the historicaly accurate story about the Libyan resistance leader, Omar Mukhtar, who led the Libyan resistance against the Italian oppressors from 1911-1931. The movie takes place during the reign of Mussolini."

This film was well photographed by Jack Hildyard, which shows a never-ending series of battles in the desert. However, if you're wondering if the entire film is taken place on the battlefield, it's not. There are moments of interruption which shows the Italian planning rooms or Bedouin planning escapes. On top of that, there are montages that show the violent ways the invaders are eventually captured by the Bedouins. NY Times writer, Vincent Canby, said when he reviewed this film, "These scenes are effective in the way that all scenes showing oppressors and oppressed usually are."

Anthony Quinn, who seems to have appeared in a lot of religious films when he was alive, portrays Mukhtar well, and gets the trait down that Mukhtar hated war, but is still fighting as if he is doing Allah's duty. Canby says about Quinn, "It cannot be a coincidence that his carefully stressed beliefs in a fundamental kind of Islam evoke the image of Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, where most of the film was shot, nor that the Libyan leader sees himself as the leader of that part of the Moslem world that rejects the international policies of someone like President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt." Mukhtar was a brilliant leader, but unfortunately did not really use the resources that he had.

There are also times in the film where it shows similarities of Mukhtar's position in the Arab society and of Yasir Arafat, the chairman of Palestine Liberation Organization. An example of this is when the Italians refuse negotiations with Mukhtar because he does not represent an independent nation, like Yasir Arafat.

Canby has also said in his review, "I suspect also that the movie wouldn't be unhappy if we should equate the camps the Italians put the Bedouins into with the Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon and even the Nazi concentration camps, though there are no gas ovens in sight in the film." And why should they? This is during the second World War, a war that everyone knows everything that happened. However, this part of the World War 2 chapter is not really known by a lot of people, which they should watch and know if they would like to know something about the war that they didn't know before.

"Lion of the Desert" is a clever film, unfortunately it's probably a film that the viewer "will take what one took into it," according to Canby. Including in the cast are Raf Vallone as Diodiece, a good but "weak" Italian soldier, and John Gielgud as Sharif el-Gariani, a "bad" Bedouin who works with the enemy. Also, before I forget, besides Anthony Quinn, who was in "The Message," he is joined once again with Irene Papas as Mabrouka. Every single one of the actors in this film do a, hands down, awesome performance and really bring the history out of the film.

Well, there you have it, I have reviewed both of Akkad's films about Muslims that he directed and produced. Tune in for next week, where I review a film about a certain Pakistani leader that was responsible for making Pakistan, and is also very historically accurate.