Christine

Christine A Screenplay By Barry Siskind Based on actual events The screenplay opens in Hungary near the Czechoslovakian border. It is 1945 and the war is ending. Christine is smuggling six Polish officers to safety. It is a run that she has done may times before only this time there is a raging blizzard. On the return trip she encounters an unexpected German roadblock. The soldiers demand that she gets out of the car. She floors the gas pedal and breaks through the roadblock. The soldiers follow. Christine knows the road well and maneuvers her car confidently. The first chase car smashes into a snowbank. Three more cars are in pursuit. Quick witted Christine pulls her car to the side of the road and empties the contents (including a tank of petrol and several opened cans of motor oil.) onto the road. In her rear-view mirror, she sees the first car slide, the second car plows into the first and the third into the front two. Safely reaching her destination she is handed a note that three colleagues (one of these colleagues is a love interest) have been arrested and sentenced to die in four days. Day one Christine, an accomplished parachutist, is seen dropping onto an open field in the south of France. She is met by two men; one she knows well (Mulroney) and the second who is the grandson of the painter Pierre-August Renoir. While walking to safety Renoir tells her about the arrest. She also learned that Renoir was driving the car and subsequently released. Christine is suspicious. Back at British headquarters Christine meets with the commander who will ultimately have to approve the rescue, but he is skeptical that Christine can pull off the escape. With the help of Renoir and Mulroney Christine overcomes her childhood fear of riding a bicycle which she will have to use to travel the sixty grueling kilometers from the UK base to Nazi headquarters. We also learn more about Christine’s background and how she developed her fierce love of Poland and her work as a British spy. Day two The road to the German headquarters is hilly and difficult for a novice bicyclist. She encounters many obstacles such as falls face first into an area where the highway has flooded. She meets a cyclist who helps as well as a helpful farmer and his wife who have ties to the local resistance cell. Later she injures herself in a fall and is picked up by a Nazi officer who insists on driving her to town. They pass a hanged woman on the outskirts of town. The first job is locating her colleagues and confirming they are alive. Using her ingenuity is able to find their location and communicate with her colleagues tapping Morse Code on a pipe that protrudes from the wall. She is able to meet with an officer who offers to introduce her to the one man who can help her free the men, but he wants a two million Franc bribe. We learn that the Germans have a mole at British headquarters, and they have a plan to catch Christine and collect the reward that is on her head. Day 3 The two million Francs arrive by parachute in the same field she landed on in day one. We learn more about Renoir’s background which heightens Christine’s suspicions. Could Renoir be a German spy? The rest of the day is spent preparing for day four when the execution is scheduled. Day four Christine is in Nazi headquarters holding a bundle which contains the cash. The clock is ticking. The execution is scheduled for 9:00 P.M. She is shown into the officer’s office but refuses to give him the money until he confirms the meeting with the man who can help. The meeting is set for four P.M. in the officers’ apartment. At first the man seems unconvinced but through Christine’s keen observations and power of persuasion changes his mind. Its night and the three doomed men are marched to the soccer field where executions are carried out. Rather than stopping, they continue to a waiting car. One of the guards is suspicion and informs his commanding officer who sees an opportunity to keep all the money for himself along with the reward that is on Christine’s head. The officer and a group of soldiers’ speeds along the highway. The escape car stalls. The driver attempts to fix it. The gap closes. Just as the escape car is ready, they are surrounded. Through Christine’s quick thinking she points suspicion at the first officer. The second officer who is helping them escape shoots the first. The soldiers, not knowing the back story, shoot the second officer. Christine and her colleagues take advantage of the slaughter and jump off an embankment and roll down to a river. They are being shot at, but the current of the stream carries them out of range. Ahead they see a bridge where German soldiers are waiting. They hear other trucks in the distance. Then the rat-tat-tat of machine guns. The river has taken them close to the British headquarters. The gun fire she hears are from British soldiers. Day five The final scene has Christine and her friends in a pub. Mulroney is missing. The station commander is toasting a job well done. We learn that the real German spy was Mulroney and that he had hung himself that morning. Christine knows that the war is over and asks – what can a spy do when there is no-one to spy on.” End