Sahara (1943)

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General		Extras
Category	War	Gallery-Poster Trailer-The Caine Mutiny; Bridge On The River Kwai; Guns Of Navarone Filmographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	1943
Running Time	93:42
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Zoltan Korda
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Humphrey Bogart Lloyd Bridges Bruce Bennett Rex Ingram Richard Nugent Dan Duryea Louis Mercier J. Carrol Naish Kurt Kreuger John Wengraf
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$24.95	Music	Miklos Rozsa

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	None
16x9 Enhancement	No
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.37:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Sahara is a little known film about World War II. Interestingly, it was actually filmed during the war and is relatively free of propaganda although it does clearly show the Allies as the good guys and the Germans as all evil Nazis. Bogart gives a characteristically excellent performance as the tough and smart tank commander who is not without feelings and he is well supported by the rest of the cast.

    This is the story of a ragtag group of soldiers in the Sahara desert during 1942. After the fall of Tobruk, an American tank crew consisting of Sergeant Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart), Waco Hoyt (Bruce Bennett) and Fred Clarkson (Lloyd Bridges) are in retreat from the enemy and on their way back to join the rest of  the Allied forces. Along the way they encounter a bombed army hospital and consequently pick up a British Army Doctor (Richard Nugent) who is accompanied by several British soldiers and a single French soldier. Before long they also meet Sergeant Major Tambul (Rex Ingram), a British Sudanese soldier, and his Italian prisoner Giuseppe (J. Carrol Naish). Shortly after they are attached by a German fighter plane which they proceed to shoot down, taking the pilot prisoner. Running short of water and fuel they set out to search for water and head south through the Libyan dessert looking for the well at Bir Acroma. Finding only a limited supply of water they soon find themselves defending both the water and their lives against a 500 strong detachment of Germans soldiers who are also desperate for the water.

Video

    This is quite a good transfer, the only significant problem being that the source material has not been restored and therefore contains a continuous stream of film artefacts.

    Except for the opening titles, which are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, the movie is presented at 1.33:1 and is therefore not 16x9 enhanced. This is very close the original aspect ratio of 1.37:1.

    No low level noise was seen. The sharpness was generally quite good but tended to vary somewhat from shot to shot. Shadow detail was also variable, normally being very good in the brighter scenes but lacking in the darker scenes, which tended to show any objects that were not well lit as large unrelieved areas of black.

    This is a black and white film. It exhibits a full grey scale.

    The transfer was free of MPEG artefacts. Only some very minor aliasing was noted on a couple of occasions. Film artefacts are present continually throughout the movie. These are mainly small white or black marks, however there are also occasional vertical scratches and larger marks. A hair appears at the bottom of the screen several times at around 39:00. Film grain is also noticeable at all times.

    The disc contains subtitles for no less than 20 languages. I sampled about 30 minutes of the English subtitles and while they are not perfectly accurate to the spoken word they extremely close.

    This is a single layered disc so there is no layer change to disrupt the movie.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Given the age of the movie, the audio is in quite good condition and is free of the hisses, clicks and pops that are not unusual in movies of this vintage.

    Four audio tracks are included: English and Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 mono and French and Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded. I listened to only the English track.

    The dialogue was always easily understood although the quality, as you would expect for a forty year old movie, was quite dated and lacking in the dynamic range of a modern production. There were no obvious problems with the audio sync.

    The music by Miklos Rozsa  is very typical of war movies of this period and not particularly inspiring.

    Neither the subwoofer nor the surrounds are used with all the sound coming from the centre speaker.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are only a minimum of pretty average extras provided on this disc.

Menu

    The menu, provided in a ratio of 1.33:1 and not 16x9 enhanced, is static and without any accompanying audio.

Gallery-Poster

    Stills of 6 advertising posters for the movie.

Theatrical Trailer

    Trailers are provided for 3 other World War II pictures: The Caine Mutiny (0:53), Bridge On The River Kwai (3:08), and The Guns Of Navarone (3:43). These are presented in various aspect ratios including 1:33:1 for The Caine Mutiny and 2:35:1 for the others. All the trailers lack 16x9 enhancement and the audio is mono.

Filmographies-Cast & Crew

    Single page filmographies for Director Zoltan Korda and cast members Humphrey Bogart and Lloyd Bridges.

    Except for the addition of Italian and Spanish audio tracks on the Region 4 disc and some variation in subtitles, our disc is identical to that from Region 1.

    Sahara was a good but not great war movie, lacking the compelling drama of WWII films such as Bridge On The River Kwai or The Guns Of Navarone. Nonetheless, I'm sure it will be enjoyed by both fans of the genre and of Humphrey Bogart.

    The video quality is adequate but clearly shows its age.

    The audio quality is quite reasonable for a film of this vintage.

    The extras are very limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall