Amanhã Sorrirei Outra Vez

This wonderful film is based quite closely on the real life exploits of a young girl born in London to an English father and a French mother.

Called upon at a time of national peril, she "did her duty".

The code-poem used in the film was the real code poem used by Violette Szabo while she was sending messages back from occupied France. The poem was written by 'Leo Marks' (qv) who was a cryptographer for SOE and often used poems like this for agents to use.

The life that I have is all that I have, The life that I have is yours.

The love that I have of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours.

A sleep I shall have, A rest I shall have Yet death will be but a pause.

For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours

Carve Her Name with Pride (1958)

A resolutely respectful and consistent movie, powerful in a quiet way, and serious to the core. These aren't really adjectives for an amazing movie--and it's not amazing. The story is amazing, since it's true, a British woman going undercover in WWII and having to suffer badly at the hands of the Nazis. And the movie depends on the story, rather than the movie, to succeed.

It does, in fact, succeed. It's a moving story well told. It lacks drama, and is sometimes quietly sentimental, which is part of the point, giving a human side to the spy and war business. The leading woman is someone not well known to American audiences, a rather straight forward actress, Virginia McKenna. But you might remember her from "Born Free," a very different kind of role but needing the same sharp seriousness. She's still alive, gladly, and was even in a film in 2010.

The movie here needs drama, frankly. It takes half the film to reach the German conflict in France, and it comes to the real drama, the horrors of being caught, in the last half hour. Which is to say, be prepared for lots of preparation, well done, but preliminary, and purposely undramatic. By that last part is good wartime stuff, with a woman as the main figure in the fighting and the aftermath. The prison scenes are cold and harsh in their own way, and yet I don't quite believe it would have been quite so calmly paced and deliberate, even in the hands of the Germans happily in France.

The story of Mrs Violette Szabo as portrayed by Virginia McKenna is poignantly brought to the screen. The exploits of an ordinary woman who proved to be - "The most fearless of all women SOE operatives" - as described by none other than another famous SOE operative Mrs Odette Churchill who survived the war undergoing almost similar experiences is a must. The film in almost three compartments re-traces the life of Violette from the time she meets her husband on Bastille Day in 1940 and their whirlwind romance, flashes to 1942 when her child is celebrating her 2nd birthday when she receives news of her husbands death at El-Alamein. It then fast forwards six months when she is recruited by the SOE as she had perfect qualifications for the post which included being a crack shot with the rifle (which however is contradicted by SOE records which state that she spoke French with an English accent...). The next part of the film features her training where she excels but sprains her ankle and has to sit out the first assignment by her team. During her convalescence she has to confront her father who feels she is not doing enough for the war effort,brush aside her guilt in abandoning her daughter etc.( Virginia McKenna handles these emotive scenes with remarkable talent) Her first assignment passes off quite well but the undertones of the danger of such attempts by agents are underplayed by the director. Her second assignment just after D-Day puts her a prisoner with the Gestapo after she has valiantly stood upto to a single-handed encounter with a German patrol - the torture she suffers and her ultimate death facing a firing squad at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp is leaves the viewer with no doubts on the methods used by her captors without depicting violence per se. The third part of the film is largely based on reports given by the French Resistance & Nazi records & reports by fellow prisoners of Ravensbruck all poignantly brought to the screen. The finale where we see her 5 year old daughter being received by King George to honour her mother posthumously with the George Cross brings a lump to the throat. Incidentally the episode of her shopping in Paris for her daughter while on assignment is corroborated by others hence not fictionalised for the film. In all a wonderful film that makes one wonder-struck with the exemplary courage of ordinary people who became legends in their time.

Virginia McKenna has long been an idol of mine, and this film is one of the primary reasons. I think she is one of the overlooked great actresses of the '50's and 60's. At any rate, this is an extraordinary film in so many ways. I love good biographical pictures in general, but this is one of the most poignant and accurate ever done. The remarkable story of Violette Szabo should be seen by all. Paul Scofield is brilliant as well. This merits a perfect score. Don't miss it!

Comedies such as 'ALLO 'ALLO have a lot to answer for. While watching some of the scenes where Violette Szabo (Virginia McKenna) is interrogated by the Nazis, I couldn't help recalling parallel scenes where Herr Flick (Richard Gibson) did exactly the same thing, aided (or is it abetted) by the leggy Helga (Kim Hartman) in the Lloyd/Croft British sitcom. This offers a good example of how time can modify our perceptions of a text.

On its own terms, however, Lewis Gilbert's film is a quietly understated biopic of a naive girl with a French mother (Denise Grey) who marries a Frenchman (Alain Saury) in a whirlwind romance. He loses his life at El Alamein, and Violette responds by becoming an agent parachuted into occupied France. Together with her partner Tony Fraser (Paul Scofield in one of his rare screen appearances) they accomplish one mission successfully, but things go horribly wrong when Violette embarks on her second, more dangerous assignment.

The film has some good action sequences, shot in and around Pinewood Studios, but Gilbert's principal focus centers on the characters' interrelationships - between Violette and her father (Jack Warner), who knows what she is doing, but agrees voluntarily to keep it a secret. Violette's relationship with Tony could bloom into love, but both know that they could lose their lives at any moment, so they agree to keep it platonic. McKenna portrays the central character as an ordinary woman with an extraordinary inner strength giving her the courage to undertake the missions while remaining determined to resist any attempts to force vital information out of her.

Her transition from ordinary homemaker to toughened agent is lucidly handled, as she is at first intimidated by and then learns to cope with her uncompromising NCO instructor (Bill Owen). It is a tribute to her strength that she learns to cope with various ordeals, of being ducked in the river, of walking home on a filthy wet night, and handling a shotgun. The training proves invaluable for her later on, when she has to take on a platoon of pursuing Nazis virtually single-handed.

Despite her hopes, Violette Szabo never made it back from the War, leaving her daughter Tanya (Pauline Challoner) to collect a George Medal from King George VI. As Tanya returns to her quiet suburban home with her grandmother and grandfather, we can but reflect that it was chiefly due to Violette's selfless efforts that Britain and the Allies managed to emerge triumphant from six years of conflict.