Home » Film & TV » Canadian Television » Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command (V&H, pt. 3)

Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command (V&H, pt. 3)

© Jael Mehr

The commentary on this segment by S. F. Wise and David J. Bercuson was an excellent companion to the film. Wise's description of McKenna's portrayal of Fleming as a "demonic acolyte," is both humorous and accurate. Both Harris and Fleming were portrayed as fairly callous and evil. Morgan, in his letter to the Ombudsman, also brings up an interesting point. When dramatizing a historical event, the choice of actors is an important one. The actor playing Sir Arthur Harris (Graeme Campbell, although the film incorrectly referred to him as Graham Campbell) WAS well-known and fairly recognizable for his roles as the villain in the picture. Having him play the British leader would remind viewers of his usual roles, and possibly color their judgement. The same problem could be encountered with Janne Mortil (credited as Jane Mortil), the Canadian actress playing Mary "Bubbles" Moore. Mortil was best known for her television series role as a squeaky-clean police officer. While it is the roles being played and not the actors playing them that viewers should note, hiring well-known actors for the roles with established film histories for a historical documentary would be like hiring Julie Andrews or Angela Lansbury to play a psychotic killer. It just doesn't work.

The goal of this segment of the film seems to be to convince viewers that the RCAF and the RAF were populated with either dictatorial tyrants like Fleming, who thought anyone who wasn't happy to be bombing people was a coward, or people who fell victim to battle exhaustion and were declared to have a lack of moral fiber. Like "Savage Christmas," this movie follows the theme that Canadians were inept little lambs who were being shepherded from one horrible disaster after another by the uncaring tyrants in charge. It allows for a few good scenes, but the McKenna's taping of Canadian WWII vets meeting German people who watched the bombings was tacky to say the least. This video would be a great one to show to any Nazi supporters left in Germany, since it portrays the Germans in a much more favorable light than it does the Canadians.

In filming this segment of the series, the McKenna brothers didn't even attempt to follow the pattern set in "Savage Christmas." This movie has none of the cohesion and connection to be seen in the first episode of the series, and seems to jump from one thing to the other without even telling you what is going on. Without viewing the transcripts from the film, it's often difficult to tell who is speaking and why. I found it odd that a movie that's supposed to be by Canadians and about Canadians would choose to lend their support to the Germans at the end. The movie seemed to say (at least to me) that Canadians were fighting over someone's desire for revenge, and a "kill 'em all" attitude, basically ignoring the fact that the Germans did the same thing. Instead, the Germans are depicted as people who fought not to defeat the Allied forces, but to protect and defend their own home and country. Over and over we were shown how horrible the bombings were for the German citizens. At least in this segment we weren't told repeatedly that no one could possibly know the true story. What they did with this segment wasn't new or "never seen before" - it's very similar to a book published in 1988 titled The Berlin Raids by Martin Middlebrook, which, like the movie, contains documented accounts, pictures of the devastation, and the question of how right the bombings were.

The copyright of the article Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command (V&H, pt. 3) in Canadian Television is owned by . Permission to republish Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command (V&H, pt. 3) in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.