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For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Crappy film

Absolutely Brilliant!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Admittedly, had I seen this film when it came out, then I probably would have given it an 8 instead of a 6. But looking at it from an older point of view over 50 years later, I was really disappointed.There are three categories of groups involved: The British, who have great plans to capture a German general and really believe they can drive through 22 German checkpoints with the General having a fit on the floor of the car without being stopped. They have no real plan, no communication system and seem to think the whole thing is "jolly good fun." Then we have the Greeks, who don't really understand that the whole thing is probably going to cause the SS troops to wipe out a few mountain villages in retaliation. They have nothing better to do than run around laughing and shouting, shaking hands and kissing everybody in sight. So instead of informing the group that about 500 German soldiers are just coming round the corner, it's better to greet long lost friends, before passing on the information. Top gag is of course having a drunken party in a house in the village in the night with a British officer in uniform eating a sheep's head at a table in the middle of the room. The place is filled with singing and dancing, the door isn't locked, they have no sentry .... Really makes the Greeks look completely incompetent and stupid. To say nothing of the British.And last but not least we have the Germans, who don't even bother to stop the General's car, filled with strange bearded men not in German uniform, as it goes through one checkpoint after another. Really made the Germans look completely incompetent as well. Which they certainly weren't.If you like this type of film, it can be watched as a relic of the past, but don't expect anything like logic or a real-life story; I had expected much more drama and far less incompetence combined with unintended ridiculous comedy.

"Ill Met by Moonlight" is a different kind of film for The Archers, and sadly, their last venture together.It's a World War II film, based on real-life events in Crete, about the British army and members of the Crete resistance who kidnap a German officer (Marius Goring) in order to send him to Egypt.The British are headed up by Dirk Bogarde.It's a slow moving film, without a tremendous amount of suspense, but I have to say I enjoyed it. It's rich in humor and examples of camaraderie among the soldiers and resistance workers. The photography is excellent, though it's no Black Narcissus.The problem with it is that it isn't up to the usual standards of Powell and Pressburger and not representative of them. I do love Dirk Bogarde, though, in everything.

This must be the worst film by Powell and Pressburger. Powell describes its failures so well (in his autobiography MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE, page 364) that one need not dwell on all the details. The biggest problem is the flip, arch, schoolboy attitude of the characters. Powell complains of Bogarde, and claims that his performance effected the others, but the script and direction can't escape blame. One of the strong moments in the much more interesting non-fiction book this is based on is when the author realizes that it's not just fun and games but all for real when the general's driver gets killed. This moment of realization is not in the film. The travel across the island with the general is much too long, and there is no evolution to the relationship between the general and his captors, which makes it very tedious. Goring is a weak-sister general; perhaps Powell's first choice of Curt Jurgens could have made a difference. But the greatest disappointment is the use of hackneyed dramatic structure, particularly in the final scenes. Whether Powell and Pressburger were good or bad, they were always original. But the sequence where the general tries to bribe the boy is so familiarly presented that every step of its structure is obvious from the start. Ditto the scene when the general leaves his hat, where we're given a clue in the dialogue that the British are on to this ruse. The scene is baldly inserted to give some sense of danger to the trek. Then there's the "I don't know Morse code, do you?" routine at the end, which is lazily resolved by Cusak coming up out of nowhere with no particular explanation. These, and other tired script devices are taken, unadorned, straight out of Saturday matinée westerns. I can forgive the lack of pacing, but not this. The photography is stunning, even though the "on-location" isn't Crete. And despite Powell's disparaging remarks about VistaVision, it really enhances the black and white.

Think of `The Guns of Navarone', but with these differences:(1) The band of adventurers genuinely like each other.(2) Their mission is not to blow anything up. Rather, they plan to kidnap a German general and take him to Cairo. It's a publicity stunt. But it soon ceases to be a MERE publicity stunt: demonstrating German vulnerability may be as important as creating it.(3) We get a good look at Crete - and NOT just because of spectacular scenic photography. We really feel at home on Cretan soil. Michael Powell, who had a talent for finding out-of-the-way composers (he also introduced Ralph Vaughan Williams and Brian Easdale to the cinema) has this time found Mikis Theodorakis, whose score is strongly flavoured but friendly to the ear.With all this, `Ill Met by Moonlight' is an unusual venture by Powell and Pressburger, in that it isn't unusual: it's another World War II mission story, and there have been dozens. It IS more civilised than most. It tells its simple story neatly and cleanly; it's sweet, unpretentious, and disappointing only in that, since it was Powell and Pressburger's last official collaboration, it would have been nice to go out with a bigger bang.The title is a line from `A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Its relevance is not obvious, at any rate not to me. Am I missing something?