This is a 1957 Italian movie that's almost completely unknown to English speaking audiences.
It's surprisingly good.
The film surrounds the raising of, and training of, an actual well known Italian paratrooper unit, going through the early training of the film and the personalities of the soldiers followed in the film. Some are conscripts, some are men who have been recalled from earlier service, including the first character who is introduced who is a monastic friar, and some new recruits. Their airborne training is explored and well done. After they are fully trained as paratroopers, they are deployed to North Africa, which the actual unit really was. It fights to its destruction at the Battle of El Alamein.
In some ways, the movie is a typical 1950s war movie, but more effort was expended on the prolonged tank battle scenes than normal. Clearly making use of the Italian army at the time, the tanks depicted are a mix of M4 Sherman's and M47s. Large numbers of tanks are used, and period fighter aircraft (although I could not identify them) are as well. The movie is very well done.
In terms of historical accuracy, here too I don't know enough about Italian, or Axis units in general, at El Alamein to know how accurately this is depicted, but it does involve a real unit that was in fact basically destroyed in the battle. Other armies, including the German and the British Army, are nearly dealt within the abstract, a fact assisted in that the British, with some exceptions, are depicted principally as armored formations so actual encounters with identifiable human beings are fairly rare. Equipment wise, the movie seems largely accurate on the Italian side, although the number of submachineguns used by the Italian paratroops is presumed to be heavily exaggerated.
This is an almost loving portrayal of the unit that is completely apolitical, which may be one of its faults. These men, in real life, were fighting for Mussolini, but in the movie neither Mussolini or fascism are ever mentioned. They're basically portrayed as men doomed to a tragic fate, which in a way they were, but in wars, there is always a larger picture.
Worth seeing, and something that we rarely actually see portrayed, that being a unit history, like that given in Platoon, of an Axis unit in World War Two.
