Dirk at war again ....

A perfect Bogarde pose!

This time as Major Patrick Leigh Fermor [see Books, Greece labels] in ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT in 1957, the last of his 50s wartime capers - THE WIND CANNOT READ being mainly a (doomed) love story set in India. We are in Crete this time, in this final collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger - who after those great '40s films I love like BLACK NARCISSUS, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, THE RED SHOES, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH etc hit a lean patch in the '50s: THE TALES OF HOFFMAN was not a success and neither was the rare OH ROSALINDA! (which I now have a copy of to watch, review soon). They then did THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE in '56 and ILL MET in 57.



Dirk plays Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died this year - I did a obit notice at the time - and it is based on the true story of how during the war he was living with the partisans in occupied Crete and how they kidnapped a German general and got him off the island and on a ship to Cairo. It is boys-own stuff really and for a war film there is a surprising lack of action. so it's another World War II mission story, and there have been dozens. It IS more civilised than most. Bogarde leads the cast with Marius Goring as the general who comes to respect his captors. The likes of Chrisopher Lee and Cyril Cusack are in the background.

The star on set - with the Rolls in the background ...