End of Year MOVIE JOURNAL

[Chris Knipp]

CHICHINETTE: THE ACCIDENTAL SPY (Nicola Hens 2019). Is a documentary about Marthe Cohn, née Hoffnung, who is French, Jewish, and 99 years old. She not only served a key function as an informant to the French toward the end of WWII, a function enabled by having grown up fluent in both French and German, but for the last several decades has gone around the world telling her story, accompanied by her American husband, a retired anaesthesiologist. She had been working as a wartime nurse, when the French government discovered her linguistic advantage. Here, she does most of the talking, and she's an impressive old gal. This supplements info found in her 2002 book, coauthored with Wendy Holden, Behind Enemy Lines. Pending release (screener Dec. 2019).