Les Contrebandiers de Moonfleet

I just watched Moonfleet for the first time and enjoyed it. I taped it one afternoon from the TV as it is not available on video.

A young boy is sent to the town of Moonfleet by his dying mother to be looked after by an old flame of hers. While there, he gets into all sorts of adventures and dangers including smuggling, grave robbing and treasure.

The cast includes a good performance by Stewart Granger and is joined by George Sanders, Joan Greenwood, John Hoyt and young Jon Whiteley.

I read in one review that this move is family viewing but I thought some of the scenes in it including the dead man hanging from a pole at the beginning may be a little too scary for younger children.

An excellent movie.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.

Having read the earlier reviews of this movie, I do agree, in part, with some of them. But would like to give my two cents anyway.

This movie was based on a quite good 1898 novel by John Meade Falkner. Unfortunately Hollywood thought they could improve on the story line---with bad results (why am I not surprised).

Where did they ever come up with the name Jeremy Fox to replace Elzevir Block? And why did they make the boy so young? Not to mention the many other plot deviations (i.e. devious woman) which detracted from the tale. This could have been another 'Treasure Island' had the producers been a little less prone to taking liberties with literature.

Now this movie is still very watchable mind you. And Granger is not too bad in his role. But if you want an idea of what the movie could have been, read the book!

Young John Mohune comes to Dorset to meet a man called Jeremy Fox who he believes was a friend of his late mother and will help look after him. Expecting a friend in Fox, John is upset to find an uncaring man who has no interest in John. He persists though in trying to gain the friendship and attention of Fox even in the face of great dissuasion. All Fox's acquaintances are rather desperate men, which fly in the face of his rather "proper" appearance. John doesn't suspect anything, being a child, but the area is famous for smugglers and Fox may be connected and perhaps be more dangerous than anyone realises – not least the innocent John Mohune.

I watched this film simply because I was a bit taken aback by the fact that it was a Fritz Lang film. Not being a name I would have associated with a period film I decided to take a look and see what he did with it. In fairness Falkner's source material does give him something to work with and there are interesting themes and ideas running through it. It takes a little bit to get going but after a while the smuggling story and the relationships make for a good adventure that is brisk enough for children while also having a bit of meat for the adults. I quite enjoyed the sweeping adventure feel it had but I was more interested in the character of Fox, who is never a "good man" and is all the better for it (in terms of the narrative). Lang appears to be interested in this as well, and he does make Fox the biggest part of the film.

Granger rises to this by turning in a solid performance where he is a rough character but not to the point where he loses the audience. The problem with the film is not with him – unfortunately it is with Jon Whiteley. He is too cute and very much a child actor – and I don't mean that in a good way. He isn't really able to emote and, apologies for the lack of intelligent criticism, but he just got on my nerves. I'm sure this film didn't want to go too deep but I would be happy to see a remake of this with a stronger and more natural child actor in the role, that may allow the relationship to be developed a bit further. Sanders is always a welcome presence but he is given very little to do. The rest of the support cast are all solid enough but the film is pretty much Granger's and he works it well even if Whiteley isn't up to much.

Overall though this is a solid little adventure tale that makes for solid family viewing. It is brisk and swashbuckling enough to entertain children while the solid yarn will engage adults. The cast mostly give a good account of themselves and, while I didn't hate him, I must admit that Whiteley was annoying to me personally and his performance here suggested a good education but a limited ability.

I like the movie Moonfleet, but in watching Moonfleet, you are also watching the demise of a great studio, still trying to turn out quality pictures as the Hollywood studio system is collapsing and movie budgets are shrinking. Moonfleet is only 87 minutes long, there are no expensive exterior action scenes and dimly lit interior scenes are the norm. Even though shot in Cinemascope, Moonfleet is a budget movie using cheaper Eastmancolor, not Technicolor. Stewart Granger was still under contract, and the other starring roles are handled by European actors, who worked for less. MGM modified existing sets, cleaned off old costumes and started the camera rolling. For all of that, the picture is interesting as it deals with 18th century English smugglers and the story of young John Mohune.

MGM executives must have decided that even with Fritz Lang, Moonfleet was not going to be a hit, which could explain the truncated story line and the always gloomy (cheaply processed) photography. On the TCM broadcast I saw, Moonfleet was in widescreen and had closed captioning. Looking as good as it ever will until the movie has a full restoration, Moonfleet is just too slow paced, without real kinetic energy. The talent is there, but probably for reduced budget reasons, Moonfleet can't grab your attention and keep it for even 87 minutes.

Addendum: I just watched parts of Moonfleet again, from a download of a bittorrent file made from the French Time Warner DVD of this movie (An AOL Company was still part of the logo then, only two years ago). In a lot of ways, this movie is a reflection of the decline of Hollywood and the importance of movie studios in general. Director Fritz Lang worked for the UFA movie studios in the 20s making silents, made talkies in the 30s first in Europe then in Hollywood, and was running out the string in Hollywood when he made Moonfleet. At the end of the movie, when young Mohune leaves open the gate of Mohune manor, the gesture does not really change things.

The MGM logo included a gate in it, the entrance to a great movie studio. There is a silent 1926 documentary made by MGM showing the different departments in the dream factory, from warehouses full of period furniture to group shots of directors and cameramen and even a garage where wind machines and power trucks were kept. MGM was a giant movie company from the start when it combined Goldwyn's studio with Metro. Less than 30 years after that silent, the MGM studio was like the desolate Mohune family manor, its contract players and staff released, its Loew's theaters sold on the cheap, its Hollywood studio barely holding on as its New York board of directors decided to fire production head Dore Schary and cut movie production, placing the studio's survival on big pictures like Raintree County, Ben-Hur and How The West Was Won.

Moonfleet is still with us, but MGM is now completely gone, its name tagged onto a film releasing company but the last of its small studio staff given their walking papers about two years ago. The fatalistic atmosphere that permeates many scenes in Moonfleet may be Fritz Lang's doing, but it could just as well be that it was hard for MGM staffers to think about happy endings as their studio was going under. And MGM's decline mirrored what was happening in the rest of Hollywood.

Under the conditions then, it was an accomplishment for the studio to make Moonfleet, hiring the talent not on payroll, preparing the sound stages for production and shooting the movie using the cheap Eastmancolor film. But to me, the picture is too much of a downer, the photography too dim and the storyline incomplete. Moonfleet is worth watching, it has a great cast but the movie needed a bigger budget to pay for better production values and scenes showing what Stewart Granger's character did after leaving Mohune manor. By 1954, MGM wasn't going to gamble on spending a lot of money on Moonfleet.

20 Oct 2012: Just looked at the review ratings here. Someone in 2006, probably another reviewer, seems to have decided to hand out multiple negative ratings to almost all the earlier reviews. I couldn't care less about the number of "not helpful" marks I got. Still, why hand out more than one negative to the same review? Nobody really cares. Maybe the guy thought giving out negatives would get his or her review posted on the front page. If so, a pathetic commentary on one useless human being who visited the "Moonfleet" IMDb page.

You have seldom seem a picture so crowed with excitement ¡ . It starts in Dortshire coast, Moonfleet , England, 1775 ,october , (Moonfleet is set in Dorset, England The Fleet refers to the land just west of Portland, Southern England ) a young boy named John Mohune (John Whiteley) is sent by his deceased mummy to seek Jeremy Fox (Stewart Granger) who is actually a rakish buccaneer . Then Fox puts him under his protection and is proceeded a special father-son relationship . The boy learns that Fox is both a ex-lover of his mum and the leader of a band of smugglers. Meanwhile both of whom look for and encounter a legendary lost diamond . Fox still haunted by the memory of the dying mother but also has another lover (Viveca Lindfords) who double-crosses him .

This classic adventure film contains emotion , intrigue , chills, and colorful scenarios. Wonderful relationship along with strong friendship is developed between the buccaneer perfectly incarnated by Stewart Granger and the newcomer boy . It contains dark moments in Hammer style as happens when the young boy journeys across an eerie world full of hanging trees , gallows , ghastly sculptures , and cemeteries plenty of coffins . Wonderful secondary cast full of prestigious secondaries as George Sanders , Joan Greenwood , Alan Napier , John Hoyt , Jack Elam , Ian Wolfe , among others . Impressive production design with glamorous sets by Hans Peters . Glimmer cinematography in superb Eastmancolor and CinemaScope by Robert Planck and mostly filmed in studios , during six weeks in 1954 , being exteriors shot in Oceanside , California. Thrilling and emotive musical score by Miklos Rozsa . The motion picture lavishly produced by also actor John Houseman is stunningly directed by Fritz Lang . Lang directed masterfully all kind of genres as Noir cinema as ¨Big heat , Scarlet Street and Beyond a reasonable doubt¨ , Epic as ¨Nibelungs¨, suspense as ¨Secret beyond the door, Clash by night¨ , Western as ¨Rancho Notorious and Return of Frank James ¨ and of course Adventure as ¨Moonfleet¨ . This good adventure drama with lots of exciting and thrilling moments will appeal to Stewart Granger fans . Rating : Better than average , resulting to be a marvellous stylised version of the Great Britain coast in the 19th century . Worthwhile watching .