World War II · Film · 1957
Ill Met by Moonlight
Two British officers and a band of Cretan partisans kidnap the German general commanding occupied Crete, bluff their way through the checkpoints in his own car and march him across the mountains with the whole garrison hunting them.
Where it happened
Follow the story across 3 places.
Stop 1: Archanes road, near Knossos
Key location
Disguised as German military police, the two officers stop the general's car at night and take the wheel.
Stop 2: Anogeia, Crete
Having abandoned the car, the group reaches the mountain villages, where Cretans hide and feed them.
Stop 3: Mount Ida (Psiloritis), Crete
Marching by night over the mountain, the captors play cat and mouse with German search parties while the general leaves clues behind.
What really happened
Germany took Crete in May 1941 in the largest airborne invasion attempted up to that time, and the island's resistance, supplied by British Special Operations Executive agents, fought on in the mountains. On the night of 26 April 1944 Patrick Leigh Fermor, William Stanley Moss and Cretan partisans stopped the car of General Heinrich Kreipe on the road from Archanes to Knossos and drove him through Heraklion's checkpoints.
For nearly three weeks they led him on foot across Mount Ida and the southern mountains until a British motor launch took them off the south coast near Rodakino on 14 May 1944. The film follows Moss's 1950 account closely; the Germans later razed villages including Anogeia in reprisals in August 1944.
Where to watch
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Full details
- Original title
- Ill Met by Moonlight
- Directed by
- Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Countries
- United Kingdom
- Languages
- English, German, Greek
- Released
- 1957
- Period
- –
- Theaters of war
- Mediterranean & Africa
- Themes
- Resistance
- Espionage
- True story
