''Give Us the Moon'' is a 1944 British

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending ( black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the o ...

directed and written by Val Guest and starring

Vic Oliver Victor Oliver von Samek (8 July 1898 – 15 August 1964) was an Austrian-born British actor and radio comedian. Early life He was born in Vienna into a Jewish family, the son of Baron Viktor von Samek. He studied medicine at Vienna University but ...

Margaret Lockwood Margaret Mary Day Lockwood, CBE (15 September 1916 – 15 July 1990), was an English actress. One of Britain's most popular film stars of the 1930s and 1940s, her film appearances included ''The Lady Vanishes'' (1938), ''Night Train to Munich' ...

and

Peter Graves Peter Graves (born Peter Duesler Aurness; March 18, 1926 – March 14, 2010) was an American actor. He was best known for his role as Jim Phelps in the CBS television series ''Mission: Impossible (1966 TV series), Mission: Impossible'' from 1967 ...

Plot

Made in 1943-44, the film is set in a future peacetime Britain, after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Peter Pyke, the son of a millionaire hotel owner, had been a

RAF The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

pilot during the war but, much to the frustration of his hard-working father, he does not want to work for a living, and idles his time away while living in his father's hotel (named "

Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

Hotel"). So when Peter stumbles across a group of people, mainly White Russian émigrés who call themselves “White Elephants” and refuse to work or be of any use to society, he eagerly accepts their invitation to join them.

Cast

as Nina *

as Sascha *

as Peter *

Roland Culver Roland Joseph Culver, (31 August 1900 – 1 March 1984) was an English stage, film, and television actor. Life and career After Highgate School, he joined the Royal Air Force and served as a pilot from 1918 to 1919. After considering other c ...

as Ferdinand * Frank Cellier as Pyke *

Eliot Makeham Harold Elliott Makeham (22 December 1882 – 8 February 1956) was an English film and television actor. Career Makeham was born in London, England. Between 1931 and 1956, Makeham appeared, primarily in character roles, in 115 films and in 1 ...

as Lunka *

George Relph George Relph, CBE (27 January 1888 – 24 April 1960) was an English actor. He acted in more than a dozen films, and also many plays. He served in the British Army in the First World War, and was shot in the leg, hindering his return to acting. ...

as Otto *

Max Bacon Max Bacon is an English rock singer. He was the lead singer for 1980s rock group GTR, as well as for Burn the Sky, Moby Dick, Nightwing, Phenomena, and Bronz. He was the vocalist on GTR's top 40 single, "When the Heart Rules the Mind" and GTR's ...

as Jacobus *

Alan Keith Alan Keith, OBE (born Alexander Kossoff; 19 October 1908 – 17 March 2003) was a British actor, disc jockey and radio presenter, noted for being the longest-serving and eldest presenter on British radio by the time of his death aged 94. Backgr ...

as Raphael *

Jean Simmons Jean Merilyn Simmons, (31 January 1929 – 22 January 2010) was a British actress and singer. One of J. Arthur Rank's "well-spoken young starlets", she appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those made in Great Britain during and aft ...

as Heidi *

John Salew John Rylett Salew (1902 (some sources state 1 January 1897)14 September 1961) was an English stage film and TV actor. Salew made the transition from stage to films in 1939, and according to Allmovie, "the manpower shortage during WWII enabled ...

as Landlord *Iris Lang as Tania *

Gibb McLaughlin George McLoughlin (19 July 1879 – 30 June 1961), known professionally as Gibb McLaughlin, was an English film and stage actor. Early days McLaughlin was born in Sunderland, County Durham, England in 1879. For about 10 years he was a sales ...

as Marcel *

Irene Handl Irene Handl (27 December 1901 – 29 November 1987) was a British author and character actress who appeared in more than 100 British films. Life Irene Handl was born in Maida Vale, London, the younger of two daughters of an Austria-born father ...

as Miss Haddock

Production and release

The film is based on the 1939 novel ''

The Elephant is White ''The Elephant is White'' is a 1939 comedy novel by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon, a regular writing team between 1937 and 1950. In prewar Paris an idle Englishman runs into a group of eccentric Russian exiles in a nightclub. Film adaptation I ...

'', written by

Caryl Brahms Doris Caroline Abrahams (8 December 1901 – 5 December 1982), commonly known by the pseudonym Caryl Brahms, was an English critic, novelist, and journalist specialising in the theatre and ballet. She also wrote film, radio and television scripts ...

and her Russian émigré writing partner

S. J. Simon Simon Jacoblivitch Skidelsky (russian: Семён Яковлевич Скидельский; 4 July 1904''1939 England and Wales Register'' – 27 July 1948), also known as S. J. "Skid" Simon, Seca Jascha Skidelsky, and Simon Jasha Skidelsky, was ...

, but the story was moved from Paris in the 1930s to London in the late 1940s. Brahms and Simon provided additional dialogue to director Val Guest's screenplay. The film opened at the New Gallery cinema in London on 31 July 1944, less than two months after

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

and almost a year before the war would end in Europe. Film reviewers at the time were not very impressed - ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...

'' reviewer found it to be "''a film which opens well utends not with the bang of vigorous cinematic invention but the whimper of overworked dialogue''." - but more recently the film has been described by one reviewer as "''one of the most delightful comedies ever made''".The Wonderful World of Cinema, May 19, 2016: ''Oh! But You MUST See “Give Us the Moon”!''
Linked 2017-05-12

Phil Hardy Philip Hardy (born 9 April 1973) is an English-born former Ireland under-21 footballer who played as a left-back. With Welsh club Wrexham from 1990 to 2001, he played more than 450 games under manager Brian Flynn. He was named on the PFA ...

's '' The Aurum Film Encyclopedia'' classed the film as a utopian

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

film but also claimed that "Vic Olivier" was the hotelier. Lockwood had just become a star with ''

The Man in Grey ''The Man in Grey'' is a 1943 British film melodrama made by Gainsborough Pictures; it is considered to be the first of a series of period costume dramas now known as the "Gainsborough melodramas". It was directed by Leslie Arliss and produc ...

'' but did not want to be typecast as a villainess.

References

External links

*
''Give Us the Moon''
at

TCMDB Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of A ...

{{Gainsborough Pictures 1944 films 1940s English-language films Films directed by Val Guest Gainsborough Pictures films British black-and-white films British comedy films 1944 comedy films Films set in London 1940s British films