Desperate Moment

Several sequences in Compton Bennett’s Desperate Moment feature characters wandering through the war ruins of Germany, such as a toppled clock tower and collapsed sculptures of the Berlin State Theater, which could place the film in the trümmer (rubble) genre, a series of postwar German films set among the physical ruins of World War II. Regardless of how the film is categorized, it effectively illustrates the psychological alienation of the postwar moment in Europe, Ronald Binge’s high-tension, strings-led score even romanticizing the isolation and destruction and Maurice Carter’s art direction adding fog and mist to further suffocate the characters’ fates. Dirk Bogarde plays Simon Van Halder, a war veteran who’s confessed to a murder he didn’t commit to save his up-to-no-good friends; when his missing lover, Anna DeBurg (Mai Zetterling), shows up alive and well, he finds new motivation to escape from prison and track down his three associates to clear his name with Anna’s help. The star of the film is the atmosphere, Van Halder’s flight through boats, trains, trucks, and subway stations taking on a tension occasionally similar to Carol Reed’s far superior The Third Man (1949), including even a penicillin plot point.