The Desert Fox
by Henry Hathaway
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cedric Hardwicke, Everett Sloane, James Mason, Jessica Tandy, Luther AdlerDirector: Henry Hathaway
Brand: Fox Home Entertainment
Writer: Desmond Young
Cinematographer: Norbert Brodine
Editor: James B. Clark
Producer: Nunnally Johnson
Writer: Nunnally Johnson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of The Desert Fox
Movie Review: Rommel's home
Summary: 5 Stars
I am writing from memory here -- of the film from three months ago, and a walk from Herrlingen to the Rommel home twenty years ago.
Although the IMDB listing says the filming took place in California, the exteriors of the home match my memory of the actual house. The driveway entry's gateposts, the curve of the driveway, the the shape and stone appearance of the front of the house, even the front doorstep.
I'll have to watch again to see if Mason was actually present in those exterior shots, or did he stay in California?
The house was briefly used as a U.S. military HQ, and then became an orphanage, I remember reading, after the war.
When I walked up the hill from Herrlingen toward the Rommel driveeway on my left, the gate was shut, but then a car approached it, and a young woman opened it, just as she saw me.
She did not want to disappoint a visitor from so far away, and so delayed her errands to show me in to the house.
I stood inside in the portico, looking up the stairway to the right, and she explained that three young families, each with two children, had cooperatively purchased the home. I believe she said each family occupied one floor of the house, though I don't recall it being tall enough for three stories.
I did not intrude further, and went back outside, where she pointed out the bomb shelter (against possible Allied air attack) to the right of the driveway (the uphill side when facing the house), up against some (birch?) trees.
When she closed the gate behind us and drove away, I turned left and walked up the hill, the route Rommel took in his last moments.
The right side of the road had several newer homes, on an uphill slope, looking out over the valley and river below. This same hillside appears bare, I recall, in the film.
On the left side of the road, the side opposite the houses, there is now a bench (concrete?) with a plaque, I believe, commemorating Rommel's death there. I sat there for a few moments. I believe photos of that site are availabe to view online.
I need to see the film again to be certain, but I now recall seeing that same spot in it, without the bench, or with a cruder wooden one (?) Ah, memory!
Anyway, among the praises in your wonderful reviews here, I want to include praise for this film's conscientious effort to utilize or duplicate the actual Rommel home in Desert Fox.
The Rommel story is of course the mirror we hold up to ourselves in times of turmoil.
How would I have acted, given a career involvement in military expertise, as I realized the madness of the rulers and the insanity my country had fallen into? Would I have withdrawn my skills from such wrong uses?
All of the recent fatuous praise of U.S. soldiers who don't think for themselves, and just "do their jobs," hmmmm....
And "loyal" U.S. civilians, who've allowed the displacement of four million Iraqi refugees, among them 10,000s of young teen girls selling themselves in neighboring countries for the survival of their families, without an "American" finger lifted to help them.
Where is the shame now among us that the German people were expected to learn and display when confronted with the ovens up the road?
In this Republic, especially, the "job" of Citizen comes first, and we have been slow, slow, slow to do it.
The Rommels present the many-layered story of sane people trying to exist in insane times, much like the parallel sad story of Robert E. Lee.
We have even more apt lifetime examples generalship, such as Eisenhower, eager to teach the rest of us to keep War as the last resort, not the first.
We gather here to learn from history, and its significant characters, so as not to repeat or perpetuate their misery.
The final coda of Manfred's long and successful career as Stuttgart's mayor indicates that these were, indeed, normal, honorable people that any of us could aspire to equal, and yet, sadly, living in a time of such evil, they could neither prevent much of the evil, nor keep it from marking their own family with its touch.
The death mask of Rommel, the photo of which I recall seeing in The Rommel Papers, casts upon us a final look of contempt which speaks many volumes.
Without going into the complex layers of bitter disappointment that might have produced such a look, I might add that I hope this soul has since found peace in understanding how an immature humanity could fail to live up to the high principles he held, and arrived at forgiveness for himself in not penetrating the fog of life's accumulated experience enough to see what he was really up against, and to escape it with his family in time.
Summary of The Desert Fox
Features include:
?MPAA Rating: NR
?Format: DVD
?Runtime: 88 minutes
What a difference a few years can make. The Desert Fox, released six years after the end of World War II, is a solemnly respectful tribute to Erwin Rommel, Germany's most celebrated military genius. James Mason's portrayal of this gallant warrior became a highlight of his career iconography. The film itself is oddly disjointed: a precredit commando raid to liquidate Rommel is followed by a flashback to the field-marshal's lightning successes commanding the Afrika Korps?-a compressed account via documentary footage and copious narration (spoken by Michael Rennie, who also dubs Desmond Young, the Rommel biographer and onetime British POW appearing briefly as himself). The dramatic core is Rommel's growing disenchantment with Hitler (Luther Adler), his involvement in the plot to assassinate der Führer, and his subsequent martyrdom. Mason's Rommel returned two years later for a flamboyant, mostly German-speaking cameo in The Desert Rats, a prequel focusing on the battle for Tobruk. --Richard T. Jameson
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