Ice Cold in Alex presents a challenge as a reviewer; the main reason to watch it is for its story. If I tell you the story to convince you to watch it, that may diminish your enjoyment; if I don’t, you just have to kind of take my word for it.
You should just kind of take my word for it.
Watch Ice Cold in Alex because it is a splendidly crafted film with an engaging story and a tremendously satisfying ending. Even though this isn’t the deepest of films, and is perhaps even overly melodramatic, it is deeply satisfying and entertaining.
This shot was cut from the movie by censors (I think it was something about Mills’ hair), but censors apparently do not look quite as closely at promotional materials.
John Mills (Dunkirk, In Which We Serve, Operation Crossbow, I could go on) plays Captain Anson, who may or may not be a useless, selfish drunk, and Harry Andrews (The Hill, Paratrooper, Operation Crossbow) plays Tom Pugh, who is, of course, a sergeant major because that’s kind of Andrews’ thing. They are in a RASC Motor Ambulance Company, and during the second battle of Tobruk, they are ordered to evacuate.
Anson, Pugh and two conveniently female passengers (Sylvia Syms, Operation Crossbow and Diane Clare) even more conveniently end up having to face the retreat across the desert alone in an ambulance. There’s sort of love triangle between Anson, some other guy you see in two early scenes and a woman you never see, which seems like it’s going to matter but finally doesn’t really because, conveniently, there are nurses on the ambulance now, and the love of a good woman can help Mills’ character defeat his demons, so let’s just have some romance here. If you like that kind of thing, this movie has it.
Though everyone acts out their melodramas perfectly well, these internal conflicts aren’t as interesting as the external ones with the Germans and the real enemy—the desert. The brutal, relentless desert is showcased. Filmed primarily on location in Libya, the actors struggle and sweat in the blazing sun. There are vast desert vistas that are beautiful and give a sense of the enormity of the task facing this tiny group.
This tiny group becomes slightly less so when they come upon Captain van der Poel (Anthony Quale, The Guns of Navarone, Operation Crossbow), who is South African—unless he’s a spy. Is he a spy?
He almost certainly is a spy—he doesn’t know how to brew tea, for God’s sake, and haven’t you seen Operation Crossbow? (You should see Operation Crossbow; this movie is better, but still).
Anyone who is not a spy would most likely know how to use this shovel to brew tea.
As they struggle against the pitiless desert and everyone involved ponders whether van der Poel is a spy or not (Why does he take his backpack with him when he goes to the latrine?), Anson brings up a far more interesting question: “So what if he is?”
I love this question. The Germans are the enemy, sure, but the more deadly enemy is the vast and unforgivingly brutal desert. Maybe this spy (Is he? What’s in that backpack?) is the extra strong back you need to survive. And if he does help you survive, is he your enemy?
So all the struggles they face, and they face a great many, test their endurance and bring them closer together, as shared hardship can. This is the core of the movie, and it is timeless.
M3 Sighting; if van der Poel isn’t a spy, why does he speak German?
The music and the dialogue can be over the top at times, but the music is never glaring—it is certainly dramatic during frantic moments, but it isn’t too high in the mix, and there are times where silence is used to great effect, such as in the excellent and tense minefield sequence.
Yes, there’s a minefield sequence, as well as Stukas, water rationing, seemingly impassible hills with deep sand, a trip through the Qattara Depression, an overheating engine, and an M3 Sighting—and quicksand! You can fill up your desert movie cliché bingo card pretty quickly in this movie (if you had “bleached camel skeleton beside the trail,” you can mark that off), but there’s very little that doesn’t help drive the plot forward. The minefield sequence particularly stands out because it is both believable and suspenseful–while having relevant character moments.
That mine seems kind of close to the wheel of the ambulance.
The minefield sequence is a highlight, but the whole film is beautifully shot with well-composed frames that sometimes have important elements at different distances while always being completely clear. I’ve watched a great many movies that have low production values for this project; Director J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone) created a visually appealing movie that comes to an interesting and satisfying conclusion–take my word for it.
Recommendation
Watch Ice Cold in Alex. You can probably watch it for free on Amazon, or some other service. You can buy the Blu ray from Amazon.
It also comes as part of the five-disc set Their Finest Hour, which I strongly recommend, particularly to Americans who may well have never seen any of the five movies in the set. Ice Cold in Alex and Went the Day Well? are very good, and many people who are not me, including George Lucas, think The Dam Busters is a classic. The Colditz Story and Dunkirk are at least okay. All of the films in this collection are beautifully restored.