Did anyone notice the similarities between this and Seven Samurai

I think the word "propaganda" and "fascist" get treated the same, used way too much and understood way too little.
This was a good movie, with good performances. And I enjoyed watching it with my dad (who's a WWII vet).

Just about any entertainment media can be defined (in some way) as "propaganda". That doesn't make it "bad". Is it bad to believe in fighting for freedom, liberty, or to keep others safe? Weren't the Nazis a bona fide threat? Fighting against tyranny has been a popular theme in drama and fiction. Makes it easier to tell the black hats from the white hats anyway.

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Why does everyone keep harping on the point that this is American propaganda? - john-1451

Because it is propaganda, but as tonyngc suggests, that term is often misused and misunderstood in the United States. In fact, there is a good deal of propaganda used to paint propaganda as a loaded term when much of the world knows and understands that "propaganda" simply means an argument that promotes a point of view, or one that criticizes a point of view. That is the essence of both advertising and political messaging, yet many Americans labor under the belief that the information we receive is somehow neutral and objective ("fair and balanced"?). That itself is propaganda.

Sahara, along with just about every war film made during the war, is a "flag-waver": It promotes the Allied effort while disparaging the Axis effort, and for good reason--it was the middle of the war. And in 1943, the tide had just begun to turn, so there was no sure sense of eventual victory. What distinguishes Sahara is that it is fairly even-handed, apart from the depiction of von Schletow as the stereotypical Nazi fanatic.

Labeling Sahara as a "propaganda film" does not lessen its impact or its quality; in fact, it acknowledges that there was a point of view behind it, one that was very germane to the events informing it.

It seems to me that this great movie is a call to arms for all those who love freedom.

Indeed. Is that not promoting a point of view--in other words, propaganda?

In a movie made in 1943, to have a black man who was dignified, competent, brave and loyal was pretty much of a rarity.

It certainly was. And we'll even leave aside that that man is Sudanese and not African-American, and that the US military was segregated at the time of this film, and that African-Americans in general would have to struggle for the next two decades for the civil rights that exemplify that "freedom" we all profess to love.

What interests me about Sahara and its depictions is this--and I will say at the outset that this is speculation as I would have to do more research to get definitive answers, but I can't help but wonder: One of the co-writers of the screenplay was John Howard Lawson, a veteran Hollywood screenwriter who also wrote the screenplay for another Humphrey Bogart wartime vehicle, the acclaimed Action in the North Atlantic.

John Howard Lawson was also a communist. He had joined the Communist Party in 1934 and had begun putting his political ideas and beliefs into his plays and scripts and other writings. Lawson was also one of the "Hollywood Ten," mostly writers who had been called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947, refused to answer the Committee's questions ("taking the Fifth Amendment")--including the infamous question "are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"--and were cited for contempt and jailed; Lawson got a one-year prison sentence and a $1000 fine.

HUAC was part of the "McCarthyism" of the post-war years, although HUAC's tenure lasted much longer and was much more pervasive than Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations of the government. But like McCarthy, HUAC was intent on ferreting out communist influences, particularly in the film industry as movies and the arts are great conduits for--here's that word again--propaganda.

Now, I don't know which parts of Sahara's script were ultimately Lawson's doing, or were from his credited co-writer James O'Hanlon, or were from the source story by Philip MacDonald, or were from director Zoltan Korda, who himself had a social conscience, particularly with respect to those colonized by the British Empire, which would include a Sudanese such as in the film. But what an irony it could be if any or all of the praise for Sahara as a film that is a "call to arms for all those who love freedom" came as a result of a communist who was jailed for one of those freedoms, freedom from self-incrimination, and later blacklisted?

The world is not always a simple place, even in the desert.


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If I were a comedian, I'd incorporate myself so I could become a laughingstock.

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