The Italians got short shrift out of World War 2–they picked the losing side, they had an indifferent to depressing war record, and their homeland became a battlefield.  But that is far from the full story.  Many Italians fought bravely and with some flashes of brilliancy.  The intelligence services in some instances out did all others.  Finally many Italians had the moral compassion to protect Jews from the Nazi grip,

Anyway El Alamein is a recent movie of an Italian unit in the Western Desert with parallels to the movie Platoon.  These Italians know they are cannon fodder for the more prestigious Afrika Corp, yet dutifully go about their business despite heat, flies, poor food, lousy equipment and so on.  The story follows the path of history fairly well.  The most poignant scene comes at the end where an unnamed person walks through a mausoleum listing the war dead.  This movie is highly recommended as an anti-war war movie–showing the human cost of war.

This movie has movie greats Christopher Plummer and Gregory Peck.  They play opposites in a moral and ethical struggle set in Italy 1943-1944. Plummer the evil Gestapo police chief is attempting to round up Jews, POWs, and refugees.  Peck, playing an Irish activist priest at the Vatican, works for the opposite goals.  The role of the Vatican’s neutrality is explored.

Although the movie is in the “made for TV” format (with annoying fade-in and fade-outs), the historically accurate movie has fine acting and on location cinematography. This is must see for Plummer or Peck fans.  But it gets high marks for suspense, ethical tightrope walking, and all around classy product (some violence).

He is Italy’s man of action.  Franco has appeared in hundreds of movies from the 1970’s onward.  His mug has played 25 seperate nationalities.  Americans may remember him as General  Esparanza in Die Hard II.  He also played the German that infiltrated the Partisans in Force 10 from Navarone.  Nero acted in westerns, adventure movies, historical flics, and romances. One of the hard to find movies was Battle of Neretva where he shared the screen with Orson Welles and Yul Brenner in the Partisan epic flic.