Ill Met By Moonlight (DVD)

Following a plan to kidnap a German Commander of the island of Crete (Crete was occupied by the Germans during the Second World War) and deliver him to Cairo, two British Intelligence officers, Major Patrick Leigh Fermor and Captain W Stanley Moss, join up with Cretan supporters to carry out the kidnap. As the Commander, Major General Kreipe, is closely guarded by his men at all times, this is no easy task. However, all goes according to plan and ...
...the difficult bit. They have to somehow smuggle him across the island under cover of the dark without being discovered. Will they be successful in their plan to embarrass the Germans? Or will they be caught and face death at the hands of the occupiers?

I rarely watch war films. I find them deeply disturbing and often far too realistic and I would really rather not know. However, this one seemed to be a little different - for a start, ... more

Following a plan to kidnap a German Commander of the island of Crete (Crete was occupied by the Germans during the Second World War) and deliver him to Cairo, two British Intelligence officers, Major Patrick Leigh Fermor and Captain W Stanley Moss, join up with Cretan supporters to carry out the kidnap. As the Commander, Major General Kreipe, is closely guarded by his men at all times, this is no easy task. However, all goes according to plan and the men kidnap Kreipe with very little difficulty. Then comes the difficult bit. They have to somehow smuggle him across the island under cover of the dark without being discovered. Will they be successful in their plan to embarrass the Germans? Or will they be caught and face death at the hands of the occupiers?

I rarely watch war films. I find them deeply disturbing and often far too realistic and I would really rather not know. However, this one seemed to be a little different - for a start, it is based on the island of Crete, where I have been, it is based on a true story and it stars Dirk Bogarde, who was himself a member of British Intelligence during the Second World War. I therefore decided to give it a go.

Dirk Bogarde plays Major Fermor, known to the Cretans as Philedem. Dirk Bogarde is an actor whose name I know well, but I know very little about him. Perhaps because of his name, I had presumed he was American, but he was in fact British (although his father was Flemish). He made his name in Britain at least with the film Doctor in the House (1954) and despite several attempts to make it big in Hollywood, he never reached the same heights that he made in this country. By the time that this film was made in 1957, Bogarde was a household name in Britain. This film is not one of his best known, although he does give a perfectly competent performance in the title role. To be honest though, he doesn't get that much of a performance to shine. The focus of the film is very much on the chase across the mountains and although Bogarde's face adds a touch of class to the film, pretty much anyone could have taken on the role and it wouldn't have made much difference. I would really have liked to get to know Major Fermor better, but there is very little about his personal life given away.

The same goes for David Oxley, who plays Captain Moss. He is brought in specially at Fermor's request and it is quite amusing at the beginning of the film to see the shock on his face when he is welcomed in local fashion by the Cretans, but apart from that he could have been anybody. The best performance in the film for me was that of Marius Goring who plays Major General Kreipe. Although the film is very British stiff-upper lip, I did feel sorry for Kreipe at times and this is very much because of Goring's performance. The one scene from the film that really stands out for me is when Kreipe is bribing a local boy to escape and tell his fellow Germans where he is. I really felt that I was being sucked into the film at this point - the rest of the time, I was all too aware that I was watching a film.

I really enjoyed the first part of the film which showed fabulous Cretan scenery and the local people. I went to Crete about 20 years ago and it seemed very much as I remembered it. Unfortunately, once the film gets into the story of the kidnap, most of the acting is filmed in the dark and the characters could have been almost anywhere (although the movie really was filmed on Crete apparently). Filming in the dark was made even more difficult by the fact that the film is in black and white.

My main problem with this film is that it seems to drift and I found it quite difficult to maintain interest. I think the main problem is that the kidnap happens very early on in the film, so there is a great build up to this, it happens, then everything that occurs afterwards is dull by comparison. The escape across the mountains should have been exciting, but perhaps because I knew how it was going to end, it just wasn't. This would have been an ideal point to give away a bit more about the personal lives of the main characters, but the directors, Powell and Pressburger, obviously decided against it. Powell and Pressburger are well known for directing films such as the atmospheric Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, but this film does not show the same eeriness and ends up falling a little flat. I was interested to see that Captain Moss was one of the writers of the film and wonder if perhaps his desire to keep the film as close to the truth as possible resulted in the lack of atmosphere.

On the whole, I thought this film was okay. The story, simply because it is based on a true one, is interesting, but it just wasn't carried over to the screen as well as it could have been, which is a great shame. I watched it on television and would recommend that anyone interested in seeing the film waits until it is shown on the TV again - I really don't think that it is worth buying the DVD unless you are a big fan of Dirk Bogarde, who really doesn't get the chance to shine.

The DVD, if I haven't put you off, is available from play.com for £8.99.

Classification: U

Running time: 104 minutes 

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