#orders to kill

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orders to kill (1958)

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Lillian Gish and M Iveria in ''Orders to Kill'' still frame

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We're spotlighting British filmmaker Anthony Asquith, from his silent film A COTTAGE ON DARTMOOR ('29) through ORDERS TO KILL ('58)

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Lillian Gish - Orders to Kill

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In Asquith's "Order to Kill," 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. Photo: Lillian Gish promotional for 'Orders to Kill' 1958 - John Jay

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Lillian Gish and Miki Iveria - Missing Scene from 'Orders to Kill'

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Seventy Years of Cinema (Orders to Kill) - By Peter Cowie - 1969 - Lillian Gish

Seventy Years of Cinema By Peter Cowie – 1969 Celluloid had been in existence since the 1860s. A French anatomist, Etienne-Jules Marey, developed the “fusil photographique,” an elongated, blunderbuss shaped antecedent of the movie camera of today. During the eighties, he also manufactured film strips. Eadweard Muybridge, an Englishman resident in California, was fascinated by …

Orders to Kill is one of the most persuasive of British films. It is a thriller that contributes a portrait of its leading character as profound as M in Fritz Lang’s film or Johnny McQueen in Odd Man Out. Massie’s playing is excellent, veering from the youthful flippancy of his approach to training in England, to his impassioned remorse when he has killed his victim Laffitte. Irene Worth gives a bitter, gallant performance as the Resistance agent, and Eddie Albert is unexpectedly sensitive as the American commander. Asquith’s technical command, too often expended on whimsical and sentimental material in the past, brings to the film an enduring glitter and resolution. His compositions—the close-up of the bloodstained hand at the start, the terrifying illusions of “The Tunnel of Love” in which Massie has to kill dummy Nazis, the inspired shots of his hiding Laffitte’s money in the Montparnasse cemetery—are characteristic of the self-effacing talent first glimpsed in the twenties.

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Lillian Gish and Paul Massie in Orders to Kill (1958)

Director: Anthony Asquith Writers: Paul Dehn (screenplay), Donald Downes (original story) (as Donald C. Downes) Stars: Eddie Albert, Paul Massie, Lillian Gish 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. Anthony Asquith: Director John Howell: Art Director Peter Polton: Assistant Director RLM Davidson: Associate Producer Desmond Dickinson: Cinematography Benjamin Frankel: Music Anthony Havelock-Allan: Producer Paul Dehn: Script George St George: Script Gordon Hales: Supervising Editor Cast James Robertson Justice: Head Instructor Paul Massie: Gene Summers Eddie Albert: Major MacMahon Irene Worth: Leonie Leslie French: Marcel Lafitte Lillian Gish: Mrs Summers John Crawford: Major Kimball Lionel Jeffries: Interrogator