This deeply moving yet sharp-edged adaptation of Greene’s short story “The Lieutenant Died Last”—about a picturesque English village occupied by German soldiers—was crafted to shore up morale and patriotism in the face of wartime Britain’s greatest fear. With characteristic Greene irony, the hero of the story is a drunk and a poacher who, because of his very transgressions, is privy to the initial breach by the Germans. Purvis remains in the film adaptation, yet loses his centrality, and the heroism is instead diffused throughout the village, as a show of the small, bucolic community’s strength and unity. This focus on the citizenry is also faithful to the story, which was written in the collective first person—a stylistic flourish rare in Greene’s more structurally straightforward novels. The film ultimately transcends propaganda and presents the horrors of war with humor, complexity and unflinching violence.