re: What World War II films do you consider "essential" viewing?

Most of the ones I would've mentioned have already been listed (nice to see Hell Is For Heroes get a shout out) so guess I'll mention the best WWII movie you've never heard of:



An American airman is dropped into occupied France to assassinate a resistance agent suspected of being a Nazi spy. But he learns that dropping bombs on anonymous specks below is a lot easier than killing a man one-on-one...




Orders To Kill was directed by Anthony Asquith (the son of a former British prime minister), who specialized in filming hit plays by veddy British, veddy genteel playwrights like Terence Rattigan. OTK is definitely the odd man out in his filmography. There is a montage sequence here that is by far the most cinematic thing I've ever seen in an Asquith film.

The film's tough atmosphere must have originated with writer Donald Downes. Wikipedia: "The film was based on an original story by Downes. He was an important OSS officer involved in numerous operations during the war, according to histories of the era."





The lead, a young Canadian actor named Paul Massie (who FWIW ended up teaching acting at the Univ of Central Florida) is OK. The acting honors go to an actress previously unknown to me named Irene Worth, as Massie's French contact. Apparently she was an American who worked mostly on the British stage -- here she is extraordinarily affecting as a resistance agent who is trying to fight against a vicious enemy while retaining her humanity.



Orders To Kill went virtually unseen for decades, but is now available on DVD. If you look hard enough, it can also be streamed online (that's how I saw it). Anyone interested in war films should definitely check it out.