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Just what I expected

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An interesting comment by several reviewers - e.g. kitsilanoca-1 - is that the cast were not prima donnas. When Sir John Mills died his co-star in this film Sylvia Sims said that the whole cast was UNcomplaining about conditions. They had all just been through the war. Anthony Quayle for instance had been in the Special Operations Executive, the forerunner to the SAS, in Albania organising resistance. They were prepared to accept discomfort and even hardship in exactly the same way as any member of the crew. An attitude that was with them the whole of their lives. It may be this that makes the film so real and gritty.

This film I saw when it first came out (yikes) as young teen. On reviewing as an OAP, it holds up quite well. In fact it probably was more understandable now than then! The simple story of a few refugees from Tobruk trying to outpace the German advance to El Alamein in the Desert War in 1941 is well told, if a little thin. The location work is excellent (at a time when UK films did not go very far afield very often - see the execrable 'Long, Short and the Tall!), the characters well drawn and acted, if a little unbelievable (especially Mills and Quayle), the writing quite sparse and the direction unobtrusively good. The final scenes in the bar have been overused but they work in the film. Pity the plot was a little flimsy and John Mills was too old for the part - he leaves a much younger man in Tobruk, who apparently went through the last war (WW1) - which does detract from the authenticity. But it is a film that modern filmmakers could study to see how WW2 was actually portrayed in a realistic fashion shortly afterwards!

This classic movie is possibly the best of its genre. Very simple and straightforwardly told story, well acted by all its cast. John Mills as Captain Anson gives his usual dependable performance ably supported by that tower of strength Harry Andrews. Sylvia Sims (so unassuming in her beauty) holds her own among the testosterone of the male actors. (There is another female but she does not last long!!) Anthony Quayle was a terrific actor - I found him memorable in one of the Gordon Scott Tarzan movies (Greatest adventure I think) as a thoroughly odious villain and he is no less memorable here. The setting is the desert campaign of the second world war and though it is set in such a vast landscape it manages to be a very intimate film thanks to the superb direction of J Lee Thompson. The final scene in the bar is a classic one - it almost created a cliché. Brilliant and can be watched again and again I have seen it several times over the years and it always enthralls me.

Even though this is one of the great films set in the Second World War I don't think I'd seen it in its entirety so when my news paper gave it away on a DVD I finally got a chance to watch it... and just like the lager in the final scene it was worth the wait.Set in the North African deserts of Libya and Egypt the film follows a small group of British personnel as they try to get from Tobruk to Alexandria in an ambulance without getting captured by Germans, running out of fuel and water or getting stranded in the harsh terrain after they have been separated from the rest of their column. Shortly after departing they pick up a South African officer who's ability to talk German gets them out of sticky situations more than once.It is an unusual war film in more than one way, for a start the group contains women who are real characters rather than just the love interest left behind while the men go off to war and secondly they don't have some exciting mission to destroy an enemy target or even to engage in combat; they just want to avoid any contact with the Germans and get to Alexandria and have an ice cold lager... hence the films title.The acting was good, I thought Sylvia Syms stood out as the nurse Sister Diana Murdoch, it was good to see a woman in a leading roll in a war film of that era. I liked that the makers didn't feel a need to have music in every scene, the total silence added to the atmosphere of the desert in many scenes.