Orders to Kill – 1958 | 93 mins | Drama | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Orders to Kill is about a young American bomber pilot (played by Paul Massie) who is sent to Nazi-occupied Paris to kill a man believed to be betraying his colleagues in the French Resistance .Before being parachuted into France the young pilot is given a rigorous training for his assignment of murder. After arriving in France the young pilot begins to realise that there is a difference between killing a lot of people (‘When I dropped bombs I wasn’t there at the other end’) and killing just one nun with a knife or with bare hands. He finds his selected victim is a gentle henpecked husband, who dotes on his daughter, and he begins to feel that the man may not be guilty. He fulfils his mission but later learns the lawyer was innocent as he imagined.

Lilian Gish is the pilot’s mother, Irene Worth plays Leonie, an experienced agent in the French Resistance. The victim is played by Leslie French, and James Robertson Justice is Paul Massie’s chief instructor. The film is most exciting, based on an original story by Donald C Downes, it was adapted for the screen by George St George. Paul Dehn wrote the film script and Anthony Havelock-Allan was yet again Anthony Asquith‘s producer.

Excerpt© ‘Puffin Asquith’ by R.J. Minney.