5 reasons to watch desert-war thriller Ice Cold in Alex

When Captain Anson (John Mills) of the British RASC Motor Ambulance Company is ordered to leave the Libyan port city of Tobruk before it is besieged in 1942, he is forced to take a treacherous journey across the desert to Alexandria. Anson sets out with nurses Diana Murdoch (Sylvia Syms), Denise Norton (Diane Clare) and Mechanist Sergeant-Major Tom Pugh (Harry Andrews), and they soon pick up a South African officer, Captain van der Poel (Anthony Quayle). Together the five negotiate terrain that proves to be emotionally and physically draining.

Ice Cold in Alex (1958) has a simple, concise plot yet packs a hefty moral weight. Sixty years after its release, director J. Lee Thompson’s desert epic still stands up as an essential war film. Here are five reasons why it needs to be seen.

Ice Cold in Alex is much less jingoistic than many war films of its time. The mission is about survival rather than victory or defeat – watching today you might be reminded of Bryan Forbes’ underrated PoW drama King Rat (1965) in which ethical certainties play second fiddle to the business of staying alive. With a script co-written by Christopher Landon, derived from his book, both character motivation and dialogue feel briskly authentic. A great deal of this must be due to Landon’s own experiences in the Second World War, when he served in North Africa with the 51st Field Ambulance.

One of the biggest British stars of the 1940s and 50s, thanks to roles in terrific fare such as This Happy Breed (1944) and Waterloo Road (1945), John Mills had a big 1958. Having served during the Second World War, he led Leslie Norman’s epic Dunkirk and is excellent as Ice Cold’s protagonist. His Anson is a weary, alcoholic officer suffering from what we would probably call post-traumatic stress disorder. Battered by the desert and beaten by war before the events of the film begin, the indefatigable Anson is a recognisable and sympathetic soldier, brought to life by Mills’ believable and nuanced portrayal.

An ambulance is not a truck, but even so Ice Cold in Alex plays something like a British answer to the French suspense classic The Wages of Fear. Released five years prior, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece is likewise a study of an epic journey involving extreme mobile peril in cumbersome vehicles and amid sweaty, uncomfortable conditions. The earlier film is certainly bleaker, and draws darker conclusions about human nature, but Thompson’s film gives it a run for its money in the tension stakes. Anson and van der Poel’s investigation of a mine field is taut and revealing, while a scene in which the latter gets caught in quicksand is as heart-stopping as anything shot by Clouzot.

Sylvia Syms once claimed that there was “very little acting” in the film because the conditions of filming in Libya were so difficult. Citing a “horrible” shoot, Syms explained, “We became those people… we were those people.” Thompson was apparently a particularly hard taskmaster, and the ambulance crew are often shown on screen as exhausted and filthy. While Syms would not be the first actor to exaggerate the toughness of location work, a glance at many scenes would suggest a genuinely taxing shoot.

The clue is in the title. The film is named for Anson’s own holy grail, the fine icy lager he’ll sup if he can just get himself and his colleagues through the baking desert. Knowing how appreciated a beer can be after a busy day at work, one can only guess at the incredible relief a soldier finishing a dangerous mission might feel when finally sinking a cold one. Mills was required to drink real beer during the shooting of the scene as nothing else looked right on film. He ended the day slightly worse for wear because of the many takes Thompson insisted on.