'The Moonraker' is a somewhat lacklustre swashbuckler with certain touches of originality. The beginning, based loosely around the final stages of Charles II's famous oak-tree escape after the Battle of Worcester, is frankly tedious, despite all the galloping horses and hack-and-slashery. Neither the King nor those who aid him -- including the "Moonraker" himself -- seem to come to life, and the action, as elsewhere in the film, gives the impression of being done by numbers. The swashbuckling elements of this film are really not its strong point: no matter what it tries, it manages somehow to come across as working down a list of clichés to be ticked.
Hero swings across the room? Tick. Precarious rope bridge spanning a chasm? Tick. Doublet slashed open to reveal wadding -- branch of candles cut in half -- rolling dive through window frame: tick, tick, tick. And I've never seen so many swords clapped obviously under the victims' armpits before!
All this is the stuff of tradition, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But it's the business of the film to make it feel joyous -- fresh and new -- and instead it contrives to make it dull.
Events pick up as soon as the character work begins, with a public coach of assorted travellers... and what with the amount of recapitulation around this point, one gets the impression that the film could just as well have been started here, and probably have benefited by it. With hindsight the script's stage-play origins can be perceived, given the narrowly-confined setting from this moment on: almost all the scenes take place within the four walls of the inn. And since it is in the dialogue and the interplay of the characters that almost all of the enjoyment lies, I have a melancholy suspicion that this film's good qualities are due to its original, while its faults lie largely in the added material.
For it is not until his arrival among the others at the inn that I found the Moonraker himself at all interesting. George Baker, handicapped by a dodgy contemporary haircut, really doesn't have the charisma to persuade in the dashing hero role, but conveys a real sense of mischief in his assumed Puritan disguise, where he is far more fun to watch. The innkeeper and his wife, who ultimately play only a small part in the plot, come to life from their initial appearance, and are the first characters whose troubles actually arouse our concern. And Parfitt, whose ultimate fate goes undeservedly all but unnoticed, is a fine comic foil who serves to push the plot along.
But perhaps the best-developed character is that of Anne Wyndham, whose principles drive her first to betray the Moonraker and then her lover, the worthy but dull Cromwellian Colonel. Swashbuckler conventions require that she first scorn the hero and then fall passionately in love and be rescued by him; but here convention is subverted. She faces a very real divided tug of loyalties, between the man she has known, liked and admired since she was a child and the politics they both believe in, and the Cavalier who makes her laugh and dares against the odds, but espouses the cause that killed her father and brothers. And her gallant lie is all too swiftly found out.
It would be easy to have her fall at the Moonraker's feet. But she doesn't, and is all the more interesting for that. The play does not demonise its Puritan characters, with the exception of Major Gregg, who is disavowed by his fellow officers at the beginning and made to demonstrate sufficient obligatory sadism to label him as the villain we are intended to hate. Colonel Beaumont, Anne's intended husband, is portrayed as a competent commander and not unsympathetic man, and we cannot help but feel for their situation when he discovers her shielding the Royalists.
So far, so good -- and the human drama lasts almost to the end. But as soon as it breaks into action again the film reverts to being second-rate. I don't understand why. But the power of the piece doesn't lie in Gregg and his quarry scrambling improbably across the cliff-face stabbing at each other, or in troopers tumbling into the abyss; it lies in Colonel Beaumont's final quiet interview with Anne as his prisoner. I'd be very interested to see the script of the original play, for this film feels as if it is trying to force a character study into a glossy adventure format it was never intended to support.
I'm not sure if the problems are with the budget and its inadequate (and occasionally risible!) special effects, the casting of the title role, or the failed attempts to expand out from what is essentially a restricted stage set. As a swashbuckler, this lacks charisma... as a chamber piece it could have been quite interesting.
Hero swings across the room? Tick. Precarious rope bridge spanning a chasm? Tick. Doublet slashed open to reveal wadding -- branch of candles cut in half -- rolling dive through window frame: tick, tick, tick. And I've never seen so many swords clapped obviously under the victims' armpits before!
All this is the stuff of tradition, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But it's the business of the film to make it feel joyous -- fresh and new -- and instead it contrives to make it dull.
Events pick up as soon as the character work begins, with a public coach of assorted travellers... and what with the amount of recapitulation around this point, one gets the impression that the film could just as well have been started here, and probably have benefited by it. With hindsight the script's stage-play origins can be perceived, given the narrowly-confined setting from this moment on: almost all the scenes take place within the four walls of the inn. And since it is in the dialogue and the interplay of the characters that almost all of the enjoyment lies, I have a melancholy suspicion that this film's good qualities are due to its original, while its faults lie largely in the added material.
For it is not until his arrival among the others at the inn that I found the Moonraker himself at all interesting. George Baker, handicapped by a dodgy contemporary haircut, really doesn't have the charisma to persuade in the dashing hero role, but conveys a real sense of mischief in his assumed Puritan disguise, where he is far more fun to watch. The innkeeper and his wife, who ultimately play only a small part in the plot, come to life from their initial appearance, and are the first characters whose troubles actually arouse our concern. And Parfitt, whose ultimate fate goes undeservedly all but unnoticed, is a fine comic foil who serves to push the plot along.
But perhaps the best-developed character is that of Anne Wyndham, whose principles drive her first to betray the Moonraker and then her lover, the worthy but dull Cromwellian Colonel. Swashbuckler conventions require that she first scorn the hero and then fall passionately in love and be rescued by him; but here convention is subverted. She faces a very real divided tug of loyalties, between the man she has known, liked and admired since she was a child and the politics they both believe in, and the Cavalier who makes her laugh and dares against the odds, but espouses the cause that killed her father and brothers. And her gallant lie is all too swiftly found out.
It would be easy to have her fall at the Moonraker's feet. But she doesn't, and is all the more interesting for that. The play does not demonise its Puritan characters, with the exception of Major Gregg, who is disavowed by his fellow officers at the beginning and made to demonstrate sufficient obligatory sadism to label him as the villain we are intended to hate. Colonel Beaumont, Anne's intended husband, is portrayed as a competent commander and not unsympathetic man, and we cannot help but feel for their situation when he discovers her shielding the Royalists.
So far, so good -- and the human drama lasts almost to the end. But as soon as it breaks into action again the film reverts to being second-rate. I don't understand why. But the power of the piece doesn't lie in Gregg and his quarry scrambling improbably across the cliff-face stabbing at each other, or in troopers tumbling into the abyss; it lies in Colonel Beaumont's final quiet interview with Anne as his prisoner. I'd be very interested to see the script of the original play, for this film feels as if it is trying to force a character study into a glossy adventure format it was never intended to support.
I'm not sure if the problems are with the budget and its inadequate (and occasionally risible!) special effects, the casting of the title role, or the failed attempts to expand out from what is essentially a restricted stage set. As a swashbuckler, this lacks charisma... as a chamber piece it could have been quite interesting.