MOONFLEET (1955) is one of those movies I've been dying to see. Of course, it's not available in any form here in the States so I had to climb into my portable tesseract and rocket to the Netherlands in order to see it. I'm a huge fan of the original swashbuckling adventure novel by J. Meade Falkner and was well aware that the film version bears little relation to it. However, as I've often said ad nauseum I can't stand people who judge a film for what it's not instead of what it actually is. The book is the book and the movie is the movie. So how's the movie?

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised. Granted, there were a few pangs while watching that I wasn't going to see events I loved in the book. However, once I got past that and watched what the movie was actually giving me, I found it to be an enjoyable bit of swash. The film is directed by the great Fritz Lang and produced by John Houseman; it stars Stewart Granger as upper crust smuggler Jeremy Fox. The novel itself is much in the TREASURE ISLAND mode and the main protagonist is a boy. Here, however, the film focuses as much (if not more) on the adult Stewart Granger character which leaves the child's role to suffer somewhat. Jon Whiteley as young John Mohune is satisfactory without bringing much in the way of personality to the part. And the film abounds with other great character actors: John Hoyt as a magistrate, Alan Napier as a pastor and Jack Elam and Skelton Knaggs as two piratical smugglers are welcome sights. Liliane Montevecchi of the Ballet de Paris as a gypsy dancer is almost a dead ringer for Jennifer Jones in DUEL IN THE SUN! And while their presence is very much appreciated, George Sanders and Joan Greenwood as a dissolute wealthy couple cutting in on the smuggling game are given too little to do.

The plot opens very much in the TREASURE ISLAND mode finding young John Mohune appearing under the night-clad street sign for the seaside town of Moonfleet. He has travelled there after the death of his mother who, in a letter, urged her son to go to Moonfleet and seek the protection of Jeremy Fox: a wealthy man who inhabits her former estate and seems to have had some sort of a past with her. The movie never really makes clear if we are to assume young John is Fox's son or not. It doesn't really matter. The opening sequence in the film is justly famous for being nicely bonechilling. In the dark of the town cemetery, the boy hears a noise and turns to be confronted by a startling statue of an angel with white, luminous eyes. Then suddenly a cadaverous hand is seen to reach up from behind a grave. With a scream, the boy runs and collapses in a faint. He is awoken to find himself staring up at a group of horrifying faces. Turns out, they're the local smugglers.

It also becomes clear that the cemetery is haunted by the ghost of Redbeard (an ancester of the boy's) who "carries off" unwary souls who venture into the graveyard at night. In this way, Redbeard's ghost is much like a Headless Horseman type of character. Redbeard had committed treason for the sake of a giant diamond of untold price and the old Mohune took the secret of the diamond's location to his grave. Through a series of events, young John places himself before the frankly disinterested Jeremy Fox to take him in. An attempt to send the boy off to boarding school fails and John returns to Moonfleet only to fall into an underground fissure beneath the graveyard. In a sequence actually taken from the book, young John finds himself in a subterranean tomb which the local smugglers have been using to store their booty. That's why the story of Redbeard's ghost was spread; to keep nosy people out of the cemetery so the smugglers can work unobserved. Sadly a quite effective scene from the book wasn't filmed. In the partially water-filled underground crypt casks of rum float about bumping into one another. The superstitious congregation of the church above, who already believe a vengeful ghost is snatching people in the cemetery, hears the sounds and believes that the dead are restless and moving about in the crypts below. It would've been a great scene had it been filmed. Ah well, anyway Redbeard's coffin accidentally crashes to the ground to reveal a locket around the skeleton's neck which young John grabs. Inside the locket is a paper with Bible quotations; oddly someone later tells John that the numbers of the Bible passages are incorrect. Naturally, this will play a huge part in the story to come. Suddenly the smugglers enter the underground tomb forcing John to hide himself in darkness in one of the coffin niches. Here he not only overhears the smugglers but discovers Jeremy Fox is their leader. In the book, the boy has to squeeze himself into the crypt niche between the earthen wall and a decaying corpse's badly-rotting coffin. Another chilling sequence not filmed for the movie; the niche is empty when John crawls up into it. However, since a big empty niche would surely not hide John from the smugglers' lamps and torches, it seems to me to be a mistake not to film the book's version. It surely wouldn't have added anything to the budget of the film to shoot the boy squeezing up next to a coffin but it would've upped the shudder quotient considerably; making a stronger film. The same goes for the floating barrels mistaken for moving corpses I mentioned earlier. A scene of the barrels floating and bumping into each other already exists in the film. All Lang would've needed was to shoot a scene of the congregation fearfully reacting (while the more sensible pastor chastized them for their silly fears) and have the people run from the church. Not a budget buster by any means but surely these two scenes would've improved the film greatly.

The movie continues on from their in fine swashbuckler fashion. One particular highlight is a bar fight between a foil-wielding Stewart Granger and a massive pike-wielding smugglers. The fight is particularly well staged (one of Fritz Lang's strong points). Lang also manages to cram his film with many MANY atmospheric and creepy visuals. The scary angel statue, the signpost for Moonfleet, the ruined, overgrown mansion formerly belonging to the boy's mother, the threatening statue of Redbeard inside the equally creepy church; all these and more testify to the talent of art directors Cedric Gibbons & Hans Peters and set designers Richard Pefferle & Edwin B. Willis. MOONFLEET is justly celebrated in France particularly for it's wonderful look provided by cinematographer Robert Planck and the Netherlands DVD I watched is absolutely beautiful! For some reason, the screen captures here look very dark and muddy but I assure you the DVD is bright and sumptuous in glorious cinemascope color! Walter Plunkett's costumes also deserve high praise. Then there's the appropriate crashing musical score by maestro Miklos Rosza; the opening theme a particular favourite of mine. Director Fritz Lang (a maestro himself as far as cinema goes) was dismissive of MOONFLEET; his attitude possibly deriving from his apparent difficulties working with his producer John Houseman as well as his difficult star Stewart Granger with whom he didn't get along at all! There is also the controversy over the studio-imposed final scene; a scene which Lang intensely disliked and shot only after Houseman promised him it would not be used. It was. However, with all due respect to Lang, I don't feel the final scene detracts from the picture in any way. I don't believe it alters anything that has gone before nor do I feel it is a typical "Hollywood happy ending" imposed on the more downbeat end Lang prepared. Lang's original ending is still in the film intact; it's just that another short scene is added after it. I won't spoil anything here but, if you happen to see the film, I believe you'll see what I mean.

While not as good as it could have been (and I do feel the French overpraise the film), MOONFLEET nonetheless is a solid swashbuckling/smuggling kid's adventure story. While I would recommend the novel without any hesitation (and would urge anyone who enjoyed TREASURE ISLAND to run, don't walk, to get yourself a copy of Falkner's novel), I would also recommend MOONFLEET the movie as a pleasant, though flawed, adventure film. I would also remind you to check out the Project Gutenberg website (the link is over there on the right hand side of the column) where you will find the entire J. Meade Falkner novel available for free download! Besides that, and even though the cable channel has no plans on airing MOONFLEET in the foreseeable future, one can look at the handsome movie trailer for the film on TCM.com. That will at least give you a taste of what is criminally unavailable in this country on DVD.