La Leçon de choses
or The Lesson
12 Feb 1941
German soldiers enter Lucienne's classroom. They search the classroom and find a hunting rifle that belongs to Jules Beriot, the principal. He tries to explain but they take him away. She goes to see him in jail. He begs her to find him a lawyer. She tries but nobody is willing to take the case. Hiding weapons might get him Beriot the death penalty, even though it is an old rifle and no longer functions.
Marchetti looks into the spy ring. He rides the bus to Essarts a few times without finding anything. He starts telling people, with Müller's permission, that there is going to be a a big arrest in Essarts the next day. De Kervern hears Marchetti talking about the arrest and prepares a message for Marie to pass along.
Lucienne goes to Dr. Larcher for help. He insists that he can't do anything but then he takes her to see Von Ritter. There she learn that Mr. Beriot is being help by the S.D. and she will have to talk to Müller because he won't talk to Von Ritter or to Larcher.
Schwartz and Marie have another rendezvous. Her husband is still in the dark as to what is going on behind his back. She hears the signal telling her that there is a message to be retrieved from the drop spot. Marchetti is watching. She almost gets caught but Schwartz shows up just as she is about to give herself away.
Lucienne goes to see Müller. She tries to convince him to release her boss. He takes advantage of her. Beriot is released. Beriot thanks her. She pushes him away with words.
Marchetti arrests the bus driver. He admits he placed a message but he doesn't know who was supposed to pick it up. Müller interrogates the bus driver but he doesn't know very much.
De Kervern knows, following the arrest of the bus driver, that it was a trap. He wonders if Marchetti was passing along the bad information intentionally.
Marchetti meets up with Hortense in the street. They don't know it but they are being watched by the private eye that her husband hired. He goes to see her the next day, thinking that she will be alone. He is surprised to find Dr. Larcher instead. He knows all and tells Marchetti before kicking him out.
Kurt visits Lucienne at the school. He has brought her a flower. She starts crying and falls into his arms.
Thoughts
There were some really good, tense and uncomfortable moments in this episode. I knew that Marie wasn't about to disappear from this show but I still found the long sequence where Marchetti is waiting to see who will pick up the message to be nerve wracking. I didn't anticipate how that moment would resolve itself.
I was not surprised when Müller took advantage of Lucienne. I kind of saw that coming although I thought at first that it would be Von Ritter who would do that.
I'm liking Dr. Larcher less and less. He talks openly about collaboration with the Germans, as if it is a good thing. I'm not sure that he is all bad but I've got a feeling that he isn't going to come up smelling like roses when the season is over.
The interrogation scene was very disturbing. Müller was ready to poke the bus driver in the eye with a lit cigarette. Even Marchetti, as cold blooded as he can be some times, was disturbed by Müller's tactics.
This was a really good episode. It felt like the pay off for the set up in the previous two.
No comments:
Post a Comment