This swashbuckler about 18th-century English smugglers and an inherited diamond was an unusual departure for director Lang. A splashy Technicolor costume epic with an outstanding cast including Stewart Granger, George Sanders, and the plummy voiced Joan Greenwood, and Fritz Lang’s assured direction,makes for this an enjoyable exercise in style and panache.
Lang, who was forced by MGM to shoot the film Moonfleet in CinemaScope, once described the widescreen process as ‘only good for funerals and snakes.’
production details
USA | MGM | 87 minutes | 1955
Director: Fritz Lang
Producers: John Houseman, Jud Kinberg
Cinematography: Robert H. Planck
Editor: Albert Akst
Music: Vicente Gomez, Miklos Rozsa
Script: Margaret Fitts, Jan Lustig
Production Design: Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters
cast
Lester Matthews as Major Hennishaw
Ian Wolfe as Tewkesbury
Jon Whiteley as John Mohune
Stewart Granger as Jeremy Fox
Dan Seymour as Hull
Jack Elam as Damen
George Sanders as Lord James Ashwood
John Hoyt as Magistrate Maskew
Joan Greenwood as Lady Clarista Ashwood
Viveca Lindfors as Mrs. Minton
Liliane Montevecchi as Gypsy
Melville Cooper as Felix Ratsey
Sean McClory as Elzevir Block
Alan Napier as Parson Glennie
Donna Corcoran as Grace
Skelton Knaggs as Jacob
Richard Hale as Starkill
Ashley Cowan as Tomson
Frank Ferguson as Coachman
Booth Colman as Capt. Stanhope
John Alderson as Nathanial Greening