Michael Powell has gone on record as expressing his dissatisfaction with this film. He was unhappy with his partner Emeric Pressburger's screenplay, dissatisfied with the lead actor Dirk Bogarde and forced to film in black and white Vista Vision in the Alpes-Maritimes region of France which was a location stand in for the island of Crete where this war story was set.
The film is based on the true story of Patrick Michael Fermor a British commando who captured a German general on Crete and then smuggled him out to Cairo. Quite the daring raid during the war.
I'll Met by Moonlight is certainly not Powell and Pressburger at their peak but it is still a very well made and entertining film. The mountains of the Alpes-Maritimes make for a spectacular backdrop and Dirk Bogarde does supply the light touch that Powell appears to have had in mind telling this story.
The British have always had a thing about treating some of their war movies as some kind of boy scout romp and this film is no exception. The film does have that strange Powell and Pressburger touch of making the German general a somewhat sympathetic villian, a character that shows up in many of their films.
The film runs 104 minutes and is certainly not a failure.
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