Movie Description 6a571x

A photograph of a box containing the presentation print of the film 'Desert Victory', which was to be sent by the Prime Minister to General Montgomery in Tripoli. The box is covered in stickers marked 'urgent'.

This film won a special Academy Award in 1943. The 1951 film The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel relied heavily on this production for its battle footage.

The film has been criticised for emphasizing the British role in the victory, while playing down the American contribution to the battle. Mark Harris, author of the "Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War," a novel about the role five prominent Hollywood directors played in the war, has stated in an interview on Turner Classic Movies that when asked about the omission, the British war department retorted that the Americans "didn't have any good footage."

A sequel, "Tunisian Victory," was produced as a co-allied production between British and American propaganda agencies, with American filmmakers Frank Capra and John Huston allegedly restaging actual events, such as liberations, as well as tank and air battles(some of which was actually filmed in Orlando, Florida) to achieve high quality footage that the British couldn't refuse. The British supposedly knew immediately that the footage was fake, but since they themselves restaged much of the footage, this uneasy collaboration continued.