At the Front in North Africa (U.S. Signal CorpsWarner) 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 hystericalbut 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...