Ill Met by Moonlight (film)

For the book, see Ill Met by Moonlight.
Ill Met by Moonlight
(Night Ambush)

theatrical poster
Directed by Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Produced by Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Written by W. Stanley Moss (book)
Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Starring Dirk Bogarde
Marius Goring
David Oxley
Cyril Cusack
Music by Mikis Theodorakis
Cinematography Christopher Challis
Edited by Arthur Stevens
Production
company
Distributed by The Rank Organisation
Release dates
4 March 1957 (UK)
24 April 1958 (NYC)
July 1958 (US)
Running time
104 minutes
93 minutes (US)
Country United Kingdom
Language English

Ill Met by Moonlight (1957), also known 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). The title is a quotation from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the book features the young agents' capture and evacuation of the German general Heinrich Kreipe.

Plot

During World War II, the Greek Mediterranean island of Crete was occupied by the Nazis. British officers Major Patrick Leigh Fermor DSO (Dirk Bogarde) and Captain Bill Stanley Moss MC (David Oxley) of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) land on the island. With the help of the local Cretan resistance in April 1944, they kidnap General Kreipe (Marius Goring), the commander of the island. They take Kreipe across rough country to a secluded cove on the far side of the island, where they are picked up and taken to Cairo, the Middle East headquarters of British forces.[1]

Cast

Cast notes:

Production

Ill Met By Moonlight was filmed at Pinewood Studios in England, with location shooting in the Alpes-Maritimes in France and Italy, and on the Côte d'Azur in France.[5][6]

Box office

The film was the seventh most popular movie at the British box office in 1957.[7]

In popular culture

The story was affectionately parodied by Spike Milligan in the 1957 Goon Show episode, "Ill Met by Goonlight".

See also

References

Notes
  1. "Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor". The Daily Telegraph. 10 June 2011.
  2. IMDB Marius Goring
  3. TCM Misc. notes
  4. John Houseman at the Internet Movie Database
  5. IMDB Filming locations
  6. P&P Filming Locations
  7. Anderson, Lindsay and Dent, David. "Time For New Ideas." The Times (8 January 1958) 9. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 11 July 2012.
Bibliography

External links


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