Highly unusual Fritz Lang film, in the context of its period though not of his overall career. Some of his earliest films were adventures, like The Spiders (1919) and Spies (1928), but the bulk of Lang’s films from the 40s and 50s were extremely dark and even morose thrillers, all of them enthralling. Coming off of two exceptional, hard-hitting black-and-white urban crime dramas, The Big Heat (1953) and Human Desire (1954), Lang next turned to a period story set in 18th England and shot in color and widescreen Cinemascope. Stewart Granger plays a charming rogue named Jeremy Fox who lives as a country gentleman while also overseeing a nifty illegal smuggling operation. An orphaned boy, John Mohune (Jon Whiteley), is sent to live with Fox and immediately begins to idolize the man as a surrogate father. It’s a similar situation to Treasure Island with some Great Expectations tossed in, but Lang’s treatment is surprisingly subdued and mature for a film of its time and genre. This total lack of forced sentimentality, combined with Lang's stately composition and editing, makes Moonfleet an extremely satisfying example of late Pure Cinema. It was a style that was dying out, of course, and the following year Lang abandoned Hollywood for his native Germany where he made two more great films before retiring.
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