A Call to Spy: Remarkable Women, Flat Film

 

 

 

A Call to Spy (2020)

Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher

IFC Films, 124 minutes, PG-13 (war violence)

★★★

 

A Call to Spy (incompletely) tells the story of two unsung heroes of World War II: Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte).

 

Many Americans assume that World War II began on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Europeans, Russians, and the Chinese know it started two years earlier. By 1940, the situation was dire, with much of Europe and North Africa occupied (or controlled) by fascist Germany or Italy and North Africa indirectly so. In Europe, only Britain stood against fascism and suffered near-constant bombing by the German Luftwaffe.

 

Virginia Hall grew up amidst gentility in Virginia and yearned to be a diplomat. She had three strikes against her; she was a woman, she lost her left leg in a hunting accident in 1933, and she did not suffer fools gladly. After being disqualified for serious work, Hall made her way to Britain and was accepted in Winston Churchill’s SOE (Special Operations Executive). Because of her language skills, she was sent into Vichy, France,* to set up networks, report on German activity, recruit members of the French Resistance, and organize sabotage raids. There was scarcely time to train agents like Hall; as late as 1943, the average lifespan for spies was just six weeks.

 

Noor’s story is woven into Hall’s though the two shared only the fact that they were part of SOE Section F headed by Vera Atkins (Stana Katic). Noor, was born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother, was a Sufi Muslim pacifist, a poet, a talented musician, and happened to be good with electronics. She was recruited to be a radio operator. If anything, she was in more danger than Hall as she and her 34-pound transmitter had to change locations constantly to keep ahead of Nazi detectors. Unlike Hall, she would be captured, taken to Dachau, and executed.

 

That could have been Hall’s fate as well. Infamous Nazi monster Klaus Barbie (Marc Rissman) considered her the most dangerous spy of the war and obsessed with trying to capture and torture her. Hall (1906-82) operated under code names such as Marie and Diane had an uncanny abilities to organize, recognize potential allies, disguise herself, and avoid capture. She also had a remarkable ability to tolerate pain. Few knew she was missing a leg and, in her one major slip-up of trusting Father Robert Alesch (Joe Doyle), a double agent, got out of Germany ahead of Barbie’s pursuit by walking across the snow-covered Pyrenees into Spain and making her way to Portugal for transport back to England. (Those who knew often heard her joke about “Cuthbert,” her name for the leather-and-steel prosthetic she wore.) She returned to France in 1944, disguised as an old woman after having her teeth ground down and stained. This time she was a radio operator and still avoided capture while collecting vital information in advance of D-Day.

 

U.S. General William Donovan recommended her for a Distinguished Service Cross to go with her Croix du guerre and an MBE. He vouched for her when she sought to join the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency after the war. Alas, her CIA career was marked by extreme sexism and was an unhappy one. To this day, Hall’s name is revered in France and nearly forgotten in the United States.

 

Both Hall and Noor deserve to be known. Alas, A Call to Spy serves only as an  introduction.  Even if you are not a big reader, pick up Sonia Purcell’s ironically named A Woman of No Importance to learn about Hall–even if you merely skim it. The movie leaves out so much, including her family’s disapproval and her marriage to French agent Paul Guillot, though he was 8 years younger and 6 inches shorter than she. The film provides enough to imagine Hall’s gallantry, but not the scope of the prison breaks, sabotage, and smuggling airmen and POW escapees out of France. Overall, the film is flat and lacks sparks.

 

I suspect Hall’s story was conflated with that of Noor to add notes of political correctness to the film. There was no need to do so. Almost no one saw this film, and Noor bloody well deserves a film of her own!

 

Rob Weir

 

*When France fell in 1940, it was divided into two zones, one controlled by the Nazis directly from Paris, and a southern collaborationist government from Vichy. Hall operated as “Marie” in Lyon (Vichy zone).