Twelve O'Clock High

"I believe that to a certain degree, a man makes his own luck."

Henry King's Twelve O'Clock High (1949) is one of Hollywood's best World War II films. It's as unconventional to its genre as King's The Gunfighter is to the Western: less a traditional war picture than an incisive study of men under pressure, ground down through a job that's hazardous, thankless and seemingly endless.

The American 918th Bomb Group, based out of Archbury, England, runs heavy bombing raids against targets in Nazi-occupied Europe. After a ...