Dirk Bogarde

Denholm Elliott

Eric Pohlmann

Akim Tamiroff

Harold Siddons

William Russell

Sam Kydd

Gérard Oury

David Peel

Michael Mellinger

Alec Mango

Anthea Leigh

Lisa Gastoni

Kay Callard

Eileen Way

Lewis Milestone

Robert Westerby

Wilkie Cooper

Aubrey Baring

Maxwell Setton

Vladimir Sagovsky

Robert Gill

They Who Dare

Mayflower Productions

United Kingdom

English

The Colossus’ of  Rhodes.

They Who Dare is directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Robert Westerby. It stars Dirk Bogarde, Denholm Elliott, Akim Tamiroff, William Russell, Eric Pohlmann and Harold Siddons. Music is by Robert Gill and cinematograpy by Wilkie Cooper.

It’s “men on a mission” time as Special Commandos and some Greek partisans meet up on Rhodes to blow up two German airfields. And that’s about it really, oh of course there’s problems along the way such as questions of loyalty, hazards and set-backs such as minefields, and talking – lots of talking - as the men stand or sit around pondering the war and or - their own inadequacies etc. When the big action finale comes it is kind of worth the wait, but the performances are only adequate throughout and the script is lazily written to the point of tedium setting in. 5/10

CinemaSerf

British forces in the Mediterranean are being constantly harried by Luftwaffe aircraft based on Rhodes. It falls to Dirk Bogarde ("Lt. Graham") to lead a small squad of British and Greek fighters whose job will be to infiltrate the defences of two air bases and reduce them - and their planes - to rubble, then get themselves back to the awaiting submarine of Eric Pohlmann's jovial "Capt. Papadapoulos". It has spells when it is quite exciting, but for the most part this is a rather slow-to-start and meandering adventure story that focusses way too much on the foibles of the characters rather than delivering a solid story. A decent cast - Denholm Elliott, Sam Kidd and Akim Tamiroff add little to neutralise the verbosity of the whole thing and the denouement didn't seem to quite make sense (or perhaps I just blinked?). It could easily lose twenty minutes of the preamble and focus more on the military and raiding aspects of the plot which I think would improve it greatly. As it is, Bogarde does enough to keep it moving - but only just.

THEY WHO DARE - Film Clip - Starring Dirk Bogarde

They Who Dare( 1954)

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A review by John Chard

Written by John Chard on Wed Jul 30 2014

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