Sahara (1943)

Sahara is a 1943 war film directed by Zoltán Korda. Humphrey Bogart stars as a U.S. tank commander in Libya during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II. The movie earned three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound, Best Cinematography and Best Supporting Actor by J. Carrol Naish for his role as an Italian prisoner. The story is credited to an incident depicted in the 1936 Soviet film The Thirteen by Mikhail Romm. Later, Sahara was remade by André de Toth as a Western with Broderick Crawford called Last of the Comanches and by Brian Trenchard-Smith as the Australian film Sahara, with James Belushi in Bogart's role. In the movie it depicts events which point to the Battle of Gazala which was an important battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, fought around the port of Tobruk in Libya which Bogart makes reference to which occurred in May–June 1942. The battle had begun with the British stronger in terms of numbers and quality of equipment, and had received many of the M3 tanks, which was the tank used in the movie, and a small group of American advisors and crews had come to train them in use of the equipment.