Watch The Black Tent For Free

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Brian Desmond Hurst made many great films but was not much of a director. He often took care of immensely great and interesting stories with great action and fascinating intrigue and had a knack for getting outstanding music to them as well, but his films are annoyingly impersonal, as if he didn't care about the actors but just focused on getting it all done and the story told. This is one of those films, typical of him, telling a great story, featuring characters of considerable interest, but coming out with only a very conventional and almost expressionless product. He just couldn't dramatize.There are many other assets to this film, though, like the photography with the epic and extremely romantic environment, the most romantic scenes taking place in the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre, the most spectacular part of the film, and dwelling long on a very comprehensive Libyan wedding among the bedouins. We don't have many films from Libya, this is from long before the days of Khadaffi and Isis and all that jazz, and what you are shown is a paradise among the bedouins in the shadow of the dramatic turnings of the second world war by Tobruk and El Alamein.What especially lifts this film is the splendid music by William Alwyn adding another dimension of colours to the already resplendently colourful film, enhancing especially the romantic scenes with that extra touch which the actors and dialogue are not able to provide.The script is by Bryan Forbes together with the author of the novel, Robin Maugham, and there is nothing wrong with the script, the saga being so humanly interesting as it is, but such a tale could have been made so much more of. It's the stuff of Lawrence of Arabia, Rudolf Valentino's sheiks and even of Charlton Heston's Moses in the desert.Of course you come to think of Hurst's other films, like "Dangerous Moonlight" (with the Warsaw Concerto), "Simba" (of Mau-Mau in Kenya), the Malta Story with Alec Guinness, Hungry Hill and The Lion has Wings, and they all suffer from the same thing: great stories, but crippled by lack of flesh to the bones, as if the director thought the actors were of secondary importance to the epic.Nevertheless, it's definitely worth giving a chance, for its exotic settings, its great story (with a surprisingly apt end), its splendidly coloured desert environments, its romance among the ruins, and its very vivid music, the most alive part of the film.

"The Black Tent" begins with a man in Britain being told that his brother, the heir to the family fortune, MIGHT still be alive in North Africa--over a decade after he was assumed to have died fighting in WWII. However, when he tracks down the Bedoins who sheltered and healed him during the war, they deny having any other knowledge of him. After he leaves, however, he finds his brother's diary--someone had stuck it in his belongings in order to let him know the truth. Most of what follows is a flashback--flashbacks where you learn that the brother was like a son to the Chief and that he even eventually married the man's daughter! But the story goes beyond that--he even organized the locals into a small guerrilla army which attacked Axis troops! What happened next? See the film.By far the best thing about this movie is the location shooting. The amazing ruins at Sabratha, Libya serve as a backdrop as is the nearby desert. However beautiful this is, however, the story itself isn't that captivating. Now it isn't because the idea is bad--it's not. But he execution seemed very plodding and flat. The writing could have been better and the actors a bit more charismatic. Still, a watchable adventure tale that is reasonably watchable.

Comparisons have been made between this film and Lawrence of Arabia; a rather unfair comparison in my view. Lawrence of Arabia is based on the actual life and exploits of T. E. Lawrence, set in the First World War. This is a war film in the mould of Tobruk, set in WWII, where it does fall down is in the long drawn out romance scenes which are something of a distraction. The script rather reflects the attitudes of the time, and you do have to suspend disbelief a few times, especially as Donald Sinden's character crosses the desert by camel dressed in city clothes, yet remains immaculate throughout. The nomads all speak perfect English, they can even rustle up a German interpreter when needed, yet have remained entirely unaffected by the outside world. There really isn't much plot to speak of, yet the cinematography lends the story some distinction. Average and inoffensive.

Even as a fan of Donald Sinden, this is only an OK offering. The most enjoyable part has to be the amazing locations, set in Libya. The original story was obviously a long novel that was a real struggle to compress into a script