Un taxi pour Tobrouk (1960) - film review

Libya, 1942.  Four soldiers in the Free French Forces are crossing the desert when their jeep breaks down.  They have no other option but to continue their journey to Tobruk on foot.  On the way, they encounter a party of German soldiers - one of whom they take captive, the others they shoot down.  Taking possession of the Germans’ jeep, the four French soldiers resume their desert crossing with their reluctant prisoner.  What ensues is an odyssey that is both hazardous and revealing, but it is doubtful that any of the five men will live to tell the tale...

Adapted from a popular novel by actor-screenwriter René Havard, Un taxi pour Tobrouk is a classic French war film that exposes the brutality and absurdity of war without recourse to sentimentality or laboured anti-war polemic.  The story it tells is based on the experiences of FFL (Free French Force) parachute troops during the Second World War, who assisted the British Special Air Service in sabotage missions against Rommel’s forces in Libya and Tunisia in 1942-3.   Whilst the film offers a few visually spectacular action sequences (of the kind you would expect to see in a quality war film), for the most part it focuses on the relationship between the five main characters - four disparate Frenchmen and a German officer - who, through their shared experiences, form a close bond of friendship and mutual respect.  The anti-war subtext is subtly delivered but highly effective.

Although understated and slowly paced, Un taxi pour Tobrouk is a film of exceptional power and humanity, which owes as much to René Havard and Michel Audiard’s incisive screenplay as it does to the arresting contributions from the five lead actors.  Charles Aznavour tops his impressive dramatic debut in Georges Franju’s La Tête contre les murs (1959) with an instantly engaging performance that is perfectly complemented by that of French cinema’s unrivalled hard man Lino Ventura.  Sequences of harrowing suspense and dramatic intensity are relieved with quieter moments of humour and introspection, giving the spectator a keen insight into the psychology of the five protagonists and their anxieties as they face up to the gruesome reality of warfare.  The abruptness of the film’s ending never fails to shock, but it serves as a potent reminder of the true character of war - an insane lottery of carnage and destruction that is a grotesque affront to humanity.

© James Travers 2007-2010

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