When I conceived the idea of making Shifting Sands in London, I had the luck to find a cameraman named Silvano Balboni, now working at Universal City. Balboni had a war record and was well liked by the Italian government, and he and I went out ahead into the Italian colony of Libya in the Sahara Desert on location.
Everything was all right with the Government, except for the fact that they were fighting a small sized war down there-140,000 Arabs against the Italian Army consisting chiefly of Ascreai and hired soldiers from Somaliland with a few regiments of Italian soldiers. Well, we looked the situation over, and as the town of Tripoli had about thirty-five miles of barbed wire around it and was under martial law, with the enemy only fifty miles away, it didn't look very much like our being able to make a picture, but it was up to us to do the best we could. While the troop was en route, Balboni made arrangements with the Government and other military authorities that we should have men, horses and armed guards, canteens, and all the other things that go with a military outfit.
Eventually we started work. Then after a few days, suddenly out of the desert came one of those gentle little breezes that we call a "gibbley," compared to which Death Valley is Paradise. Well, this gibbley blew for about a week-terrible, hot winds right over the heart of the desert and all we could do was to stay in the hotel, but I can assure you that the first breath you took when you stepped out in the street was like inhaling heat from a furnace. It was actually physical pain to feel this hot air go down into the lungs. After the gibbley had abated we went out into the heart of the desert to shoot some of the sand stuff and there our real trouble commenced, all due to what is known as interpreters. Imagine the process: I had to tell Balboni, in English, what I wanted, Balboni had to interpret it to the sergeant of the troops in Italian, the sergeant in turn had to tell it to the head Arab in a sort of mongrel Arabic, or I really should call it the Coast language. The head Arab would call his lieutenants and tell them in pure Arabic, and then they would tell the men. After everybody had been well told five or six or seven times, poor old Balboni and myself would get out and show them what we wanted, and in the meantime nothing would be moving but the sun, and it was going down. Well, after a while we got them into the spirit of the thing and boy! they acted just all over the place and really.
Fred Leroy Granville, "Working in the Desert," Film Yearbook 1924, pages 19, 21.
© 1997, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)
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