by kingrat » Tue Aug 21, 2012 6:32 pm
I liked ORDERS TO KILL (1958, Anthony Asquith). Although Eddie Albert, Lillian Gish, and James Robertson Justice are the first, third, and fourth billed actors, the largest and most important parts are played by Paul Massie, Leslie French, and Irene Worth, all superlative. British intelligence believes they've identified a traitor in the French Resistance, and they send in a war-weary pilot (Massie) because he has lived in Paris and speaks fluent French. His mission is to execute the traitor, a different matter from dropping bombs on anonymous targets. He's eager to do the job and gets specialized training in methods of killing (James Robertson Justice is one of his eccentric instructors). When he arrives in Paris, he meets his contact, a seamstress (Irene Worth) who, unlike him, understands exactly what is involved in their mission. Worth's energy and passion leap off the screen, yet she's never theatrical in the wrong way. The target turns out to be an apparently harmless old man (Leslie French, who resembles Donald Pleasence). Is he really guilty? Can the pilot carry out his mission? Should he? What will happen after he makes his decision?
Paul Massie, a Canadian actor, had played Brick in Peter Hall's London production of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. His voice is very much like Richard Chamberlain, and like Chamberlain he is well-cast as a sensitive and decent man. His other big film roles were in LIBEL as Dirk Bogarde's accuser, and in SAPPHIRE. Around 1966 he appeared as a guest artist at the University of South Florida, and he became a professor of drama there, apparently finding a profession he liked better than film and professional stage acting.
