Desperate Moment ** (1953, Dirk Bogarde, Mai Zetterling, Philip Friend, Albert Lieven) – Classic Movie Review 9511

Director Compton Bennett’s mostly creaky and feeble 1953 British black and white crime melodrama Desperate Moment largely wastes the bright talents of the young and beautiful Mai Zetterling and Dirk Bogarde.

In Berlin after World War Two, ex-resistance Dutchman Simon Van Halder (Bogarde) is accused of murdering a British soldier after he and three other men try to steal penicillin from a British Army outpost, and, though innocent, he confesses to obtain penicillin for his illness. He is sentenced to life in prison. He thinks his girlfriend Anna DeBurg (Zetterling) is dead. But she reappears, he breaks free from the prison hospital, and they hunt the real killer and the witnesses who can clear him. But then the witnesses begin to die.

Based on the novel by Martha Albrand, it has a twisty but desperately implausible plot, though the excellent actors do their best with the material they are offered, and it has the odd good moment.

Also in the cast are Philip Friend as Captain Bob Sawyer, Albert Lieven as Paul Ravitch, Fritz Wendhausen as Warder Goeter, Carl Jaffe as Becker, Gerard Heinz as German Prison Doctor, André Mikhelson as Polizei Inspector, Harold Ayer as Captain Trevor Wood, Walter Gotell as Ravitch’s servant/ henchman, Friedrich Joloff as Valentin Vladek, Simone Silva as Valentin’s girl Mink, Ferdy Mayne as Detective Laurence, Walter Rilla as Colonel Bertrand at the Dutch consulate, Antonio Gallardo as Spanish Dancer, Paul Hardtmuth as Wharf Watchman, Theodore Bikel as Anton Meyer, Gerard Heinz Frederick Wendhausen, Harold Ater, Friedrich Joloff, Walter Rilla and Paul Hardtmuth.

Desperate Moment is directed by Compton Bennett, runs 88 minutes, is made by BFM, Fanfare and Rank, is released by General Film Distributors (GFD) (1953) (UK) and Universal Pictures (1953) (US), is written by Patrick Kirwan and George H Brown, is shot by C M Pennington-Richards, is produced by Earl St John and George H Brown, is scored by Ronald Binge and is designed by Maurice Carter.

It is made at Pinewood Studios, England, and on location in Germany, including at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

Interestingly, Dirk Bogarde [Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde] is playing a Dutchman in the film. The ancestral town of his paternal grandfather Aimé van den Bogaerde was Izegem in West Flanders, Belgium, but he told his grandson Dirk that he was in fact Dutch.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9511

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Mai Zetterling in 1948.