My Best Film Ever
Father thought that going to the cinema was sinful and did not allow Maman to go, but when he was out of the country on business, in Rodrigues Island, or Reunion, for weeks at a time, she would sneak in a visit or two to the Luna Park with Nani Gateau, the old widow who had no husband to answer to, to catch a Bollywood weepie.
However, that did not stop her from stopping me going, although my two older brothers were under no such restrictions. They even went to the Cinema des Familles to see French films which openly showed kissing and decolleté fronts. Not that they were French. Mostly they were American but they were dubbed in French. Once or twice a year, a couple of English films would appear, probably by mistake, and these would be shown, usually to small audiences because of the language difficulties. It’s not that we don’t understand the English language perfectly, the people would claim, because we do, but in films they speak like an express train having to make up for a delay!
I was under ten, a good-for-nothing student, scatter-brained and disobedient, dirty with snot dripping down my nostrils, I told lies, I wetted my bed, and as such had no human rights to speak of, but what really hurt was that my best friend Azam who was a whole month younger than me went with his brothers. And to tease me, they would recount in detail scenes from films they had seen, but although I would pretend anger, I would hang on to their every word.
When my brothers’ friends came to our home, I would be unceremoniously shooed away, but I would sneak into a small cranny and eavesdrop.
Later I would become a film addict, and I want to describe here my best film ever. Miss V From Moscow. It was half of a double bill, which included Target For Tonight, both in the original English version. It was during the war, and I
suspect that the Information Office had something to do with that billing, as no doubt it was felt by the Colonial Office that the patriotic fervour of colonials had to be nurtured _ not that we, flag-waving, Rule- Britannia-singing patriots needed any incitement.
The impossibly blonde Lola Lane is an ordinary peasant from the kholkoz, and as Russia is drawn into war, she becomes a volunteer. She trains with the boys and sees active service at the front where she gives the most excellent account of herself. With utmost contempt for her own life, she saves fellow soldiers and receives bravery awards, the Lenin medal and all. But in spite of Lola’s determination and valour, the Allies seem to be losing ground, and desperate measures are needed to stop the march of Adolf Hitler. Her own soldier sweetheart having been killed by the Nazis, Lola is willing to give up everything for the Fatherland, and volunteers for one of the most dangerous missions of the war.
She undergoes the most rigid training, and with her natural aptitudes and utter dedication, she learns fast. From now on she is going to be known by her code name, Miss V From Moscow. Paris has fallen like a ripe mango, and 84, Avenue Foch is the centre of German Intelligence. The enemy seems to be having the upper hand and is scoring points over the Allies in all the spheres of war. Every single move of the Allies is anticipated by the perverse enemy. Our planes are brought down everywhere they go, as if they were expected. Our warships are waylaid and ruthlessly sunk by U-boats. At this rate the war would be over in months and evil would have triumphed. The Allies consult. The benevolent Uncle Joe, our own cigar-chomping Winston and the great American hero Roosevelt meet in secret and decide that drastic action needed to be taken to avoid the worst. Hitler has to be beaten at his own game. Someone will have to infiltrate the enemy Secret Service headquarters. And as I guessed, that someone could only be the invincible Miss V! The audience at the Cinema des Familles gasp and breathe a collective sigh of relief as they realise that the fate of the world was now in safe hands. Lola is dropped behind enemy lines, and picked by the Maquis.
She begins by killing the blonde German agent sent by Berlin on the führer’s orders and walks into the lion’s den, impersonating her. The audience marvels at her audacity, and five hundred bums edge forward on their bug-ridden seats.
Lola plays the part like the Oscar winner that she is! She mixes with Nazi villains, clicks heels and heils-Hitler with the best of them, and keeping her ears and eyes open at all times, she gains priceless information, and sends it to London on a small transmitter from her hide-out in the hole of a diseased oak in the Bois de Boulogne. Allied lives are saved and enemy plans are foiled.
Our air attacks become more effective, our ships play hide and seek with Nazi U-boats and successfully take evasive actions and let our warships deal with them. A hysterical Hitler, banging his fist on the table, is shown reacting to the news that the tide is turning against him. He summons his top men, threatens them with a fate worse than death unless they stopped the haemorrhage of German resources instantly. After endless discussions they arrive at the conclusion that Avenue Foch had been infiltrated. Paris seems to be the weak point, and they decide to double their vigilance.
Otto, an impossibly blond and rabid Aryan Nazi whose advances Miss V had spurned earlier, was the first to be on to Lola. On one or two occasions German tracking devices had seemed on the point of detecting her hide-out in the Bois, but, tipped by a Maquisard René (what else?), she manages to escape arrest in extremis, rebuking her pursuers for ruining her attempts at catching the enemy spy red-handed by blundering in. They end up by begging her not to report them to the SS.
Miss V regularly slips over to London to meet her superiors and be debriefed. On one such visit, it is suggested to her that as her cover was becoming fragile, the best thing for her would be to go back to Moscow, but would she hell? She had come to Paris to do a job, tovarich, she knew from the start what the risks were, and not in a million years would she contemplate leaving before the Nazis had been roundly defeated. She had sworn an oath to her dead sweetheart. The serpent and its eggs had to be scotched and burnt so that never again would they be in a position to come infect this good earth of ours with their evil. The British officer pulls on his pipe knowingly and nods. He had never for one moment doubted that this was exactly how Miss V would react. The audience at the Cinema des Familles respond by clapping, whistling and stamping their feet. But it’s an order, shouts the Russian Marshall who had said nothing until now. The audience holds it collective breath. V is stunned, but not for long. She takes a deep breath and begins fervently to beg for one final mission. The brass hats consult, and her request is finally granted.
The martial music gives way to melancholic Russian balalaikas at this juncture.
Back in Paris, the sinister Otto is very alert to Lola’s every move, and she knows it, but an Allied convoy is about to cross the Atlantic with vital supplies, and the Germans seem to know their plans. This information has not reached Miss V yet. The convoy is seen splitting the waves, as faint strains of Rule Britannia rise in a gentle crescendo.
Miss V never takes unnecessary risks, she is such a professional, but it is crucial that this convoy gets through. René slips a piece of paper in her hands. Otto who was watching her seems to have caught this, but she manages to swallow the evidence after having read the message.
The audience holds its breath once again, lest the slightest noise alert the hateful Otto. It becomes clear that the message concerned the location of U-boats lying in wait for the Allied convoy. Something had to be done, but Otto and his men are like a pack of hounds trailing a hare.
Lola knows that to save the convoy, she has to warn London, and has absolutely no illusions about the price to be paid if she tried to get to the Bois de Boulogne, but for the brave there is no alternative. She decides to act. She tries to shake off her pursuers and make for her forest hide-out. The convoy continues to split the waves, but Rule Britannia has now become shaky, casting doubt in the minds of the filmgoers about the outcome.
She quickly assembles her equipment, nearly losing a vital valve. Otto’s men are now within earshot and their hounds are barking menacingly. She tries to transmit, but the line seems dead. The barbarians are approaching all the time, and the hounds baying for blood, leaping up in the air ferociously, are seen raging with their shiny curved fangs glistening in the afternoon sun, the chains holding them looking very vulnerable. The lines are still not responding. The villainous Otto barks out an order to his men and is seen smiling as he pulls on a cigarette which he holds between the ring finger and the major finger of his left hand.
Inside there is still no life in the transmitter, but as the Germans burst in upon her, it springs to life and with a smile Lola begins tapping away her message. Pitilessly the Nazis mow her down, but full of bullets though she is, her fingers tap out of their own accord. The convoy is seen heading towards the waiting U-boats, and she keeps tapping, not even deigning to acknowledge the presence of her German tormentors who fill her with more bullets, but nothing stops Miss V. Her body is lifeless, but her spirit and fingers are alive and they keep going until the whole message is delivered. The mystified Nazis keep shooting at her, but their bullets seem useless. Only after she has finished does she look defiantly at Otto and the Germans, smile triumphantly, and collapse and fall to the ground like a bundle, to a melancholic Russian funeral march.
The audience is deathly quiet, and this enables it to hear the Morse signals take over from the dirge, the more clearly. The convoy changes course, and a full-blooded Rule Britannia now fills the auditorium, as it sails to safety.
I have my personal treasury of best film scenes ever: Victor Sjöström being pulled by the corpse into his coffin in Wild Strawberries, Olivier hurling himself at Basil Sidney at the end of Hamlet, Jean Louis Barrault miming the action of the pickpocket to Arletty in Les Enfants du Paradis, Raj Kapoor singing Awara houn, John Wayne on the point of smashing poor Natalie Wood’s head in The Searchers, the love-sick heroine pushing water inside her gourd in Mohsin Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh, so she could get to meet the man who has won her heart more quickly, but the scene that I recall above all others is the one of the Allied convoy changing course, which I formed in my mind’s eye as I heard my brothers recount it to Maman when they came back from the Cinema des Familles some time in 1944 when I was nine. I have never been able to erase the image of the convoy changing direction as the Morse signals reach it, from my memory, even if I have never seen my best film ever to this day.
