A sad coda for Powell and Pressburger

Although Ill Met by Moonlight has been both broadcast and even released on DVD in the US (under its crashingly ordinary American title, Night Ambush), I had never seen it -- probably owing to my unthinking confusion due to the changed title -- until getting the original on R2 DVD in Britain earlier this year. So, just a few reflections from a Powell-Pressburger fan (though not hagiographer) and first-time viewer:

Overall, this is a very disappointing film, especially coming from the likes of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The film is based on the true story (with the usual dramatic license and liberties) of a British plot to kidnap a high-ranking German general from Crete during World War II. (When else?!) Although many have characterized this film as tense and exciting -- and, presumably, the real mission was, along with "scary", plus a few other life-threatening things -- the film conveys little of these emotions.

It's giving away nothing to say that the operation succeeds: the British commandos land on Crete, quickly grab the German, take him into the mountains, evade capture and stuff him on a boat back to Britain. If this synopsis sounds too pat and matter-of-fact, it's in large part because I found the film to be little more than just precisely that: a rather straightforward, not very eventful, repetitious, dragged-out, ultimately uninteresting and inconsequential minor war drama. Although there are a couple of brief sequences of tension, these are quickly dispensed with and the film returns to an almost leisurely-told tale, quite bizarre given the circumstances. The commandos are rarely in true danger of death or capture, there are no real "battles" as such, the drama isn't particularly interesting or involving, and the mission as depicted mostly meanders along from one bump in the road to the next. It almost seems as though, despite their being in enemy territory and having to evade the Germans with the help of the Greek underground, the Brits handled this all not just routinely, but almost with an air of off-handed detachment.

In short, those expecting a repeat, in terms of compelling drama and suspense, of Powell's genuine classics of similar genre, such as The Spy in Black, Contraband, 49th Parallel and One of Our Aircraft is Missing, will be greatly let down. There was more genuine suspense and action, movement of story, in Powell's Edge of the World or The Small Back Room...even in the utterly dissimilar Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. The team's previous picture to this, another real-life WWII action/drama, The Battle of the River Plate (US: Pursuit of the Graf Spee), suffered from oft-lethargic, even plodding direction from the usually effervescent Powell, obvious staginess in scenes aboard the Royal Naval vessels, and a remote, even coldly detached, view of its characters thanks to Powell's incessant use, in that film, of distance- and medium-shots in place of any close-ups, which soon becomes boring and, worse, isolates the characters from the audience. Those particular defects don't recur in Ill Met by Moonlight, probably because it is, by its nature, a more intimate story. But at least River Plate comes alive in its sea battles, and there is real dramatic tension once the chase finally gets underway and the climax nears. Ill Met has no truly crashing lulls, but no genuinely soaring highs either: it wanders along, telling its tale in a subdued manner devoid of any real drama in all but a handful of scenes. To oversimplify, nothing much exciting or spellbinding really happens -- and this in a commando mission on an enemy-occupied island. The most suspenseful scene takes place in a dentist's office...and no, it's not a harbinger of Marathon Man!

Dirk Bogarde was an excellent actor, but here he's too light and almost bemusedly detached from the mission he's on, closer to his character in Doctor in the House and its sequels than to his more dynamic, brooding and dramatic turns in, say, Victim or The Servant. Now, humor and a certain light approach to portions of the role may be called for, but not throughout, and this lessens the impact of the drama and any sense of imminent danger. Bogarde does well as far as the part permits, but it's an off-target characterization as written and directed. The other fine performers in the picture include P/P veteran Marius Goring, as the movies' usual "civilized" Nazi (who forms a too-sudden and dramatically unestablished bond with Bogarde at the end), David Oxley as Captain Stanley Moss, leader of the mission, Cyril Cusack, Laurence Payne, Michael Gough and, in an uncredited bit, Christopher Lee. The cast can't be faulted in their performances (though Goring is, as was often the case, a tad over the top), but they really have nothing very interesting to do.

To me, the most pleasing component of the movie was the music score by Mikis Theodorakis. Besides the main themes, it's regularly heard bridging the time frames between the film's set pieces, each time over a shot of the moon behind the Cretan clouds -- interludes I found myself looking forward to. But though the music is lively and enjoyable, it's ill-suited for Ill Met. It helps convey the Hellenic setting, obviously, but as a composition it's far more fitting in tone and tempo for a film such as Zorba the Greek than this. A score that's novel and takes an original approach to its subject matter is one thing, but one -- even a good one -- that sounds so completely displaced from the events depicted on the screen does not aid in the story. There are some loud, impacting passages during the points of greatest action (a relative term, here), but overall the score matches the mood of the film well...which is to say, it doesn't really fit the tale it has to tell. Still, the music is lively and engaging, if on a level wholly inconsistent with what the film should have been. Dimitri Tiomkin's faux-Greek score for another Aegean adventure, The Guns of Navarone, did much more justice to the type of musical accompaniment such a film requires.

One final quibble is the title itself. "Ill Met by Moonlight" is a lovely, even poetic, title, but it conveys the impression of a romantic drama, or perhaps a swashbuckler...anything but a war film. ("Night Ambush" is no better: prosaic, pedestrian, unimaginative, too much like a B-western.) As much as I like the title as such, it's slapped on the wrong movie.

In sum, I found this film to be too uninvolving: short on suspense, failing to convey a sense of the genuine heroism the real mission must have required, and surprisingly uneventful once one or two principle sequences are gotten out of the way. Not a bad film, just not a very good one, Ill Met by Moonlight is a weak and distressingly uninspired finis to the once-brilliant collaboration between two of the most brazenly ingenious filmmakers ever to make their mark on the screen. After this, The Archers ended their formal partnership. "Ill met" they were not -- how fortuitous was their pairing, and how fortunate we cinephiles are to have their legacy, including even lesser films such as this, to look back on and enjoy again and again (though we can never truly experience the joy of discovery of each new film that audiences knew in the 40s and 50s). But given the decline in their once-high standards, as evidenced by Ill Met, it was perhaps past time to call it quits and go on to other things.

Any Powell-Pressburger film should be seen, but not all are of equal merit. Ill Met by Moonlight is, by any measure, disappointing. By the criteria of The Archers, it's more than disappointing -- it's all rather sad.