How Does Peter Medak Manipulate the Viewer of the Film; Let Him Have it(TM).

Authors Avatar

Nancy Ackland                                                                                English Coursework

29.11.2008

How Does Peter Medak Manipulate the Viewer of the Film; ‘Let Him Have it’.

The film ‘Let Him Have it’ is based on a true story of a man named Derek Bentley. The title of the film was taken from a line that Derek was thought to have spoken before PC Miles was shot by Christopher Craig, a friend of Derek’s, while they were breaking into a sweet factory. It is set in 1952. Derek became epileptic shortly after being buried in a pile of rubble in the Blitz in the 1940’s. Later on he was officially classes as ‘mentally subnormal and it was proved that he had the mental age of about an 11 year old’. He was hanged for the murder of PC Sidney Miles, a police officer, years later in the 1950’s.

Peter Medak’s main aim of the film was to gain the viewers sympathy for Derek Bentley. He shows the characters in different lights throughout the whole film, to show the personalities of the different characters.

Join now!

This story is very controversial because many people had different feelings and opinions of everything. A few examples are: There are many different viewpoints on what happened during the break in of the factory and the murder of PC Miles. Also because some argued that the meaning of line ‘Let Him Have It’ was that Derek was encouraging Christopher to shoot the officer while others believed he intended to persuade his friend to hand over the gun to the police. Numerous people thought that Derek Bentley shouldn’t have been sentenced to death and hung, although some believed that it was ...

This is a preview of the whole essay