Ill Met by Moonlight

Ill Met by Moonlight (1957)

They stole a General under the noses of his 20,000 crack paratroops.

Led by British officers, partisans on Crete plan to kidnap the island's German commander and smuggle him to Cairo to embarrass the occupiers.

Date of release
1957-01-31
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (46)
Runtime
1h 44m
Genres
War, Adventure
Director
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Ill Met by Moonlight

Ill Met by Moonlight (1957), released in the US as Night Ambush, is a film by the British writer-director-producer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and the last movie they made together through their production company "The Archers". The film, which stars Dirk Bogarde and features Marius Goring, David Oxley, and Cyril Cusack, is based on the 1950 book Ill Met by Moonlight: The Abduction of General Kreipe by W. Stanley Moss, which is an account of events during the author's service on Crete during World War II as an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Production

Emeric Pressburger had read and bought the rights to W. Stanley Moss's book in 1950, but production would not begin for another six years. Following the success of The Battle of the River Plate (1956, American title: Pursuit of the Graf Spee), The Archers agreed to a one-film contract with the Rank Organisation, but disagreements between Powell and Pressburger over that contract and aspects of the film production contributed to the final breakup…

In Million Dollar Movie (1992), the second volume of Michael Powell's memoirs, he describes Ill Met by Moonlight as one of The Archers' "greatest failures," despite the film's financial success. Part of his unhappiness is attributed to Pressburger's screenplay, but he also describes conflicts with Rank's studio bosses over casting, film format, and locations.

Although Powell was especially unhappy with Bogarde's performance, Patrick Leigh Fermor expressed great satisfaction with Bogarde's representation of him.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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