Give Us the Moon

Give Us the Moon is a 1944 British comedy film directed and written by Val Guest and starring Vic Oliver, Margaret Lockwood, and Peter Graves.[1][2]

Give Us the Moon
Original British film poster
Directed byVal Guest
Produced byEdward Black
Screenplay byVal Guest
Based onThe Elephant is White
by Caryl Brahms & S.J. Simon
StarringMargaret Lockwood
Vic Oliver
Roland Culver
Peter Graves
Jean Simmons
Music byBob Busby
CinematographyPhil Grindrod
Edited byR.E. Dearing
Production
company
Distributed byGDF (UK)
Release date
  • 31 July 1944 (1944-07-31) (UK)
Running time
95 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Plot

Made in 1943-44, the film is set in a future peacetime Britain, after the end of World War II. Peter Pyke, the son of a millionaire hotel owner, had been a RAF 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 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

Production and release

The film is based on the 1939 novel The Elephant is White, written by Caryl Brahms and her Russian émigré writing partner S. J. Simon, 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 and almost a year before the war would end in Europe. Film reviewers at the time were not very impressed - The Times reviewer found it to be "a film which opens well [but] ends not with the bang of vigorous cinematic invention but the whimper of overworked dialogue."[3] - but more recently the film has been described by one reviewer as "one of the most delightful comedies ever made".[4]

Lockwood had just become a star with The Man in Grey but did not want to be typecast as a villainess.[5]

References

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