Commando sur Rhodes

It's the Second World War. Dirk Bogarde is sent on a mission to Rhodes to destroy two Axis airbases with a crew of British commandos and Greek partisans.

The copy of this movie that played on TCM today was in poor shape. Not only was it too dark to reveal much in the way of details, but the color balance on the Technicolor print it was drawn from -- or perhaps the telecine it was converted on -- was off; the dark-for-night scenes had gigantic swaths of blue, and the faces of the actors verged on orange. the cinematography by Wilkie Cooper looks like it was bleached into impressionism. It looks like it was drawn from a bad 16 mm. TV print. In addition, while there were many scenes shot on location in the Dodecanese, there were a tremendous number of process shots put together in such a way that there was no mistaking them.

It's a shame, because it's a talented director -- Lewis Milestone -- with actors worth looking at: Dirk Bogarde, Denholm Elliott, Akim Tamiroff, Gerard Oury, and Eric Pohlman head the cast list.

I think this movie is worth another attempt, but until I can see a copy drawn from senior 35 mm. elements, I cannot recommend this to anyway. If someone is aware of a better copy, I would like to know of it.

British forces in the Mediterranean are being constantly harried by Luftwaffe aircraft based on Rhodes. It falls to Dirk Bogarde ("Lt. Graham") to lead a small squad of British and Greek fighters whose job will be to infiltrate the defences of two air bases and reduce them - and their planes - to rubble, then get themselves back to the awaiting submarine of Eric Pohlmann's jovial "Capt. Papadapoulos". It has spells when it is quite exciting, but for the most part this is a rather slow-to-start and meandering adventure story that focusses way too much on the foibles of the characters rather than delivering a solid story. A decent cast - Denholm Elliott, Sam Kidd and Akim Tamiroff add little to neutralise the verbosity of the whole thing and the denouement didn't seem to quite make sense (or perhaps I just blinked?). It could easily lose twenty minutes of the preamble and focus more on the military and raiding aspects of the plot which I think would improve it greatly. As it is, Bogarde does enough to keep it moving - but only just.

Not sure what I expected from this one. Dirk Bogarde is my favorite actor and I have had pleasant encounters with Milestone as well. Here the latter screws up on multiple occasions.

First off the cinematography is way too light and some of the shots are rather clumsy. The script could be faltered as well. And some of the acting, especially from the one playing a character who keeps singing this awful and quite annoying tune.

Mind you it's not bad. Bogarde's performance makes it worth while. But really if it hadn't been for him this would have been below mediocrity. It got a few strong moments and whenever Bogarde is on screen you nearly forget everything else that has been going on.

I will not recommend this but overall it was OK. I think the casting apartment did some horrible choices though.

World War II movie, of British production, which does not have anything that justifies the time one could possibly spare to see it, other than the great Dirk Bogarde starring, with the good British actor Denholm Elliott in a second role. The scenario is rather conventional (we have seen this stuff many times) and does not develop the characters and their relations as it could. It has also attempted to give a Greek aroma, in a very clumsy way: as there is not even one Greek actor among the cast the spoken Greek sound very strange (at least to someone who knows the language like me). Additionally, the portrait of the Greeks falls into a lot of stereotypes, which sometimes are offensive to these people, revealing more things about the script writer himself than the actual Greeks. I have given to this movie 4 out of 10.

"They Who Dare", which Lewis Milestone directed in 1953, comes across as a kind of preamble for "The Guns of Navarone" and was handsomely shot on location. It deals with the exploits of a small group of British and Greek soldiers tasked with blowing up German air bases on Rhodes but is rather lacking in action; most of the time is spent on the journey to the targets thought when the fighting does start it is lively enough. This is Dirk Bogarde in handsome, dashing leading man mode rather than Bogarde the actor he was ultimately to become and others in the cast include Denholm Elliot and Akim Tamiroff, though they are both wasted. It's hardly comparable to Milestone's other war movies but it's far from being a right-off either.