The Best of Enemies

A war comedy set in the desert. East Africa, 1941. British and Italian units face each other. A British pilot is shot down and an Italian captain takes him prisoner. But he does not kill him; he gives him water and lets him go. What follows is a series of encounters: the two men meet again at different stages of the war and each time one is in the other's hands. Neither kills the other. The idea is to show the absurdity of war. Both sides run out of water in the same desert, deal with the same flies, and most of their orders come from a distance, from people who do not know the situation. The register is comic, but the film does not present war as funny; the deaths are real and the outcome benefits nobody. David Niven plays the British officer and Alberto Sordi the Italian captain. It is a co-production between the two countries and one of the examples of two film traditions working together. Guy Hamilton directed. A little-known good example for anyone who likes war satire and Italian comedy of the 1960s. For a viewer expecting a hard war film, the register is light and the story is deliberately built on repetition.