| Play Dirty | |
| Director: | Andre de Toth |
| Producer: | Harry Saltzman[1] |
| Screenplay: | Melvyn Bragg Lotte Colin |
| Story: | George Marton |
| Starring: | Michael Caine Nigel Davenport Nigel Green Harry Andrews Aly Ben Ayed Vivian Pickles |
| Music: | Michel Legrand |
| Cinematography: | Edward Scaife |
| Editing: | Jack Slade Alan Osbiston (uncredited) |
| Distributor: | United Artists |
| Studio: | Lowndes Productions Limited |
| Runtime: | 117 minutes |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
Play Dirty is a 1969 British war film starring Michael Caine,[2] Nigel Davenport, Nigel Green and Harry Andrews. It was director Andre de Toth's last film, based on a screenplay by Melvyn Bragg and Lotte Colin.[3]
The film's story is inspired by the exploits of units such as the Long Range Desert Group, Popski's Private Army and the SAS in North Africa during the Second World War.
During the North African Campaign in the Second World War, Captain Douglas is a BP employee seconded to the Royal Engineers to oversee incoming fuel supplies for the British Eighth Army. Colonel Masters commands a special raiding unit composed of convicted criminals, and after a string of failures he is told by his commander, Brigadier Blore, that he must have a regular officer to lead a dangerous last-chance mission to destroy an Afrika Korps fuel depot, otherwise his unit will be disbanded. Despite Douglas's objections, he is chosen for his knowledge of oil pipelines and infrastructure. Douglas is then introduced to Cyril Leech, a convicted criminal rescued from prison to lead Masters' operations in the field.
The next day, Douglas and Leech are provided with armed jeeps and lead six other men out into the desert disguised as an Italian Army patrol: the Tunisian Sadok (demolition man), the Greek smuggler Kostas Manou (armorer), Boudesh (communications), the Cypriot Kafkarides (transport and supplies), and the arab guides Hassan and Assin. They endure a long and arduous trek across the desert: encountering hostile tribesmen, sandstorms and a booby-trapped oasis, among other dangers. Unknown to Masters, Blore has sent a regular army raiding party overloaded in wheeled trucks with the same objective 2 days behind Masters, but they are wiped out in a tracked vehicle German ambush. While Leech and his men are often insubordinate towards Douglas's command. One of the gay couple gets severely injured by a landmine while stealing watches off soldiers' corpses during a stop for supplies. Douglas captures a German ambulance in which they discover a German nurse, who is forced to tend to the injured man. The men eventually try to rape the nurse but are prevented from doing so. Finally, they reach their objective, only to discover that the depot is fake. After taking shelter, Leech admits to Douglas that he is being kept alive only because Masters is paying him £2000 for his safe return. Douglas insists that the men continue their search for the fuel depot, but the men laugh in his face.
The group then follows Leech's lead and heads to a German-occupied port city, hoping to steal a boat and escape; Douglas sees the fuel depot there and convinces Leech that destroying it would aid their plan. Meanwhile, Masters is confronted by Blore with aerial photographs of the supposed depot intact — confirming the mission's failure. Having lost contact with the men for some time, Masters is ordered to leak intelligence on the team to the Germans; the British Army is now on the offensive, and it wishes to keep any enemy fuel depots intact for capture.
Under the cover of night, the men don German uniforms and sneak into the port depot to plant their explosives, but one of them sets off a trip flare and they are quickly surrounded; an officer on a loudspeaker calls each of them out by name, revealing Masters' betrayal. The men scatter as the depot is detonated; Leech and Douglas manage to slip away, while the rest are discovered and killed one by one. Back in the ambulance, while waiting for the rest of the men to return, the injured team member, on his deathbed, uses his last strength to murder the German nurse bound and gagged beside him.
The Eighth Army arrives the next morning; Douglas and Leech (still wearing their German uniforms) decide to surrender to the British. Unfortunately, a trigger-happy British soldier opens fire, killing them before noticing their white flag of surrender. The soldier is chastised momentarily by his superior before the troops move on.
The film was originally titled Written in the Sand;[4] it was announced in October 1967 with Michael Caine to star and René Clément to direct.[5] Caine later said he made the film because of his relationship with producer Harry Saltzman and the fact he wanted to work with Clément.[6]
The film was also known as Deadly Patrol.[7]
In February 1968 Richard Harris and Nigel Davenport signed to co-star, by which time the film had been re-named Play Dirty.[8] [9] However Richard Harris ultimately did not appear in the film.
According to de Toth, Lotte Colin did hardly any of the screenplay despite being credited. She was Saltzman's mother-in-law.[10]
The film was originally planned by Saltzman to be filmed in Israel. Saltzman asked Andre de Toth to scout the country for locations.[11] De Toth said Clément wanted to film in Morocco or Algeria, but Saltzman refused to go to North Africa, and Clément refused to go to Israel. The film ended up being shot on location in the Tabernas Desert near Tabernas in Almería, Spain.[12]
Richard Harris left his home in London for Spain on 16 February 1968. He said he was handed a script which was different from the one he had agreed to do when he signed on. He quit the film and sued the producers for payment of his salary, which was a reported £150,000.[8]
After Nigel Davenport replaced Harris, and Nigel Green replaced Davenport, René Clément resigned as director, and executive producer André de Toth took over directing the film.[13] De Toth said Clément "wanted to make a 'poetry of war'" while Saltzman "wanted blazing guns and roaring tanks".[14]
Several other films were shooting in Almería at the same time, including Shalako. Caine later said, "There are six sand dunes in Almeria... We'd all come round the hill chasing Rommel's tanks - and there's horse shit all over the desert and a stagecoach in the other directions being chased by Indians. The other film units were forever wiping out tank tracks to get their westerns and we were forever shovelling up horse shit and wiping out hoof prints to get our El Alamein." Caine later said he had a clause in his contracts that any film on which he worked could not be made in Almería. "It was that bad".[15] [16]
De Toth later said that in making the film, "I wanted to rub our noses in the mess we have created and how we shy away from our ability to clean it up... I wanted to disturb, to open closed eyes and scramble brains."[17]
The film was a box office disappointment.[18] Critics had mixed-to-negative opinions. Stanley Eichelbaum of the San Francisco Examiner, noting the opposite attitudes to war expressed by various filmmakers -- either "anti-war" or exploiting "the greater glory of war," said of Play Dirty that it "tries to satisfy both viewpoints and trips itself up badly."[19]