Four people in an ambulance are struggling to cross the hot, blinding North African desert on their way from Tobruk to Alexandria. It's 1942 and Rommel's Africa Corps is just about to take Tobruk and continue its race to Egypt. There is Captain Anson (a blond John Mills), an ambulance officer stressed to the breaking point and just this shy of being an alcoholic; Sergeant Major Tom Pugh (Harry Andrews), a big, capable lifer who has been with Anson for several months and knows his weaknesses; Diana Murdoch (Sylvia Syms), a nurse who was stranded in Tobruk, who has a steady hand but has seen her friend, another nurse, die in an attack on the ambulance; and Captain van der Poel (Anthony Quayle), a strong, swaggering South African they meet in a deserted outpost. Captain Anson is persuaded to let van der Poel join them because van der Poel has three bottles of gin with him. He also carries something in a knapsack he refuses to let out of his sight.
Ice Cold in Alex is one of the best of the war movies Britain produced in the Fifties. It sets up a small group of people on a tense journey through a desolate landscape in a broken-down ambulance. We get to know these people...and we begin to worry whether Captain Anson is going to lose it every time he gets close to a bottle; whether van der Poel is truly a South African or a German spy; whether it will be Sergeant Pugh, or Nurse Syms, or van der Poel who'll get killed in one of the dangerous situations they encounter. And the movie has plenty of well-directed, tense situations coming one after the other. The four of them encounter mine fields that must be crossed, sand storms, Nazi ambushes and pursuits, capture by German troops they must talk their way out of (with van der Poel coming in handy), mechanical breakdowns and quicksand. And if there is one lesson they all learn, it's to never park your vehicle on the top of a giant sand dune.
The movie is unusual in that the hero is damaged goods. John Mills is excellent in portraying Captain Anson as a determined and stalwart British officer. He's even better at showing this man just a bit too eager for a drink, too quick to justify it, too close to breaking down when things don't work out. Mills was not a big man, and he has to dominate the movie next to two very big men, Harry Andrews and Anthony Quayle. Both are nearly a head taller than Mills. In one scene Mills as Anson collapses and Quayle must pick him up, carry him several steps to the rear of the ambulance and deposit him inside. This is all done in one shot. Quayle looks as if he's dealing with no more than a 50 pound bag of flour, yet Mills is definitely the one we watch during the movie. His Captain Anson may be falling apart, but he is determined to get the ambulance and its passengers to Alexandria. While he struggles to do so we can see that he's slowing pulling himself together. It's a nice performance. There also is almost no distraction from artificial romance. There is only the faintest hint of a possible relationship developing between Nurse Murdoch and Captain Anson, just a brief moonlight nuzzle and, much later, a realistic recognition of Anson's continuing demons and the difficulty of making personal plans in wartime. The movie also gives a much more subtle approach to the German enemy. At the conclusion, while the four of them are finally enjoying an ice-cold lager in an Alexandrian bar, one of them points out that, working together, they beat the desert, which was a bigger enemy than...well, you'll need to see the movie.
