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Dangerous Moonlight

1941 film by Brian Desmond Hurst

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 21, 2026
Entity authorityQ3415280
Source-derived summary

Dangerous Moonlight (U.S. title: Suicide Squadron) is a 1941 British musical film directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and starring Anton Walbrook. The film is perhaps best known for its score, written by Richard Addinsell and orchestrated by Roy Douglas, that includes the Warsaw Concerto. The gowns in the film were designed by Cecil Beaton.

Dangerous Moonlight's love-story plot, told mainly in flashbacks, involves the fictional composer of the Warsaw Concerto, a Polish piano virtuoso and shellshocked fighter pilot, who meets an American war correspondent in Warsaw and later returns from the United States to join the RAF in England in the war against the Germans, who have occupied Poland.

Plot

During the German invasion of Poland, Polish airman and piano virtuoso Stefan Radetzky meets American reporter Carole Peters. He volunteers to fly a suicide mission but is not selected. Radetzky is among the last to escape Warsaw and months later, in New York, he and Carole reunite and marry.

In England, Radetzky performs a public concert and reveals that he has returned to fight, volunteering to fly as a pilot in a Polish squadron, although Carole fears that he will be killed. His final mission ends in self-sacrifice when he crashes into a German aircraft. He is badly injured in the crash and suffers from amnesia.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dangerous Moonlight” as 1941 film by Brian Desmond Hurst. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1941—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1941-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Dangerous, Moonlight and film can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1941 film by Brian Desmond Hurst. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3415280. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Dangerous Moonlight”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Dangerous Moonlight primary sources, Dangerous Moonlight archive and Dangerous research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Dangerous Moonlight”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Dangerous Moonlight” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.