Nicole (Mission: Impossible)
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[edit] Tape scene:
Recycled from the season 2 "The Photographer".
[edit] Summary:
Jim and Rollin are briefed by agent Sparrow (distress phone 311-8571) to look after a list of double agents that is kept in the study's safe of Minister of Intelligence Anton Valdas' chateau, behind the Iron Curtain. At Valdas' official party, while Jim falls in love with double agent Nicole Vedette, on the second floor, Rollin steals the precious envelop but things turn wrong and Jim is shot in the belly by officer Razoff and held prisoner. Rollin refuses to let his friend down. Nicole makes wounded Jim believe that the list is false and helps him to escape from his cell. Valdas orders his men to track them down. Fortunately, Rollin poses as one of the watchdogs to save Jim but not Nicole who dies because of Valdas' pistol shooting.
[edit] Cast and details:
Minister of Intelligence Anton Valdas with a medical collar, skinny officer Razoff, Janus agent and Valdas' secretary Nicole Vedette, operative Sparrow, Rollin's unnamed contact, old lady Madame Prokov, young blondes Ilsa and Helga, Minister in Valdas' study are played by Logan Ramsey, Dal Jenkins, Joan Collins, James McCallion, Jacques Denbeaux, Ann Shoemaker, Anita Mann and Rena Horton, Jon Lormer. The reactionary character of Madame Prokov complains to Jim about Ventakoff's obscene leaning and she dislikes modern art. The agent name Sparrow is already used in the season 1 episode "Memory". Both Nicole and Sparrow are double agents and she is on the list. As Cinnamon, Nicole wears a pink article of clothing: her shirt, and, as Jim, she is gunned down in the belly. To stop the alarm, Valdas turns a button anticlockwise, located at the bottom of a wall lamp in the corridor and adds a bug in Nicole's hand bag after her first escape attempt. Oddly enough, Valdas drinks a Brandy inside his black Mercedes while talking to Nicole who threatens him with blackmailed information to protect her life.
Jim poses as Major Ivan. To depict that Jim falls in love with Nicole, director Stuart Hagmann shoots them with a long lense (creating a flat and blured perspective) through objects and people by rack focusing (to shift from out-of-focus to in-focus) and show them starring and walking at each other as a love waltz--this hide and seek scene is sweet and delightful. When Nicole drinks with Jim, you can hear the theme of Cinnamon; Nicole guesses the profile of Jim-as-Ivan: 37, Pisces, unmarried, educated at the Venskry Academy. Besides, Hagmann over-uses the fade over process to show Jim and Nicole's escape in the woods that is recycled six times: notice the use of moon insert, low angle shot of a dark sky with trees inserts, zoom in with a long lense, high angle studio sets shots. Jim passes out twice: first after releasing Rollin and being gunned down by Razoff and then in the first floor of the barn next to Nicole. One strange scene takes place in the barn: after being healed by Valdas' doctor thanks to an injection (I guess morphine to ease the pain) in the neck and by searching inside Nicole's bag for a cigarette, Jim discovers that her matches are bugged by Valdas (dolly in on Jim's face) and we later learn she doesn't know it. Stuart Hagmann shows Jim and Nicole blinded by Valdas' car and men.
Rollin pose as libidinous old and sick General Ventakoff with grey hair, moustache (a la "The Glass Cage") and sideburns who is deaf and crippled and walks with a stick; Rollin emphasizes the senile side of his character and calls Valdas: Valdrat; Rollin chases two blondes (Ilsa and Helga) and then pretends to be drunk, drugs the Study's guard with a wet handkerchief, presses a button behind a bookcase, uses his fake audio device to crack the safe (but it is protected by a newly installed pressurized floor that triggers an alarm) and he is trapped in the office because of the moving metallic fence. When Rollin, posing a tourist with a camera, meets a contact in a corridor, they test each other like this: - The Man: "Hey. You got a cigarette? - Rollin: "Yes, I have." - The Man: "Keep it. It's your last one." - Rollin: "We can share it." As in "The Town", Rollin goes look for his friend, keeps an eye on Valdas' black car via binoculars, poses as a Valdas search party military by knocking one of the three in the rear. Valdas guns down Nicole and Rollin swiftly reacts by killing Valdas with a machine gun.
The grey set of the concrete basement with its long stairs is recycled in many episodes: "The System", "The Glass Cage", "Live Bait", "The Bunker, Part I". This episode features no dossier scene so the IMF logo appears at the start of Act I. The apartment scene at Sparrow's place is shot under the table with a fluid dolly shot, meaning Sparrow is doubtful.
Cinnamon, Barney and Willy are absent--during the briefing, Rollin says that he will ask Barney some informations about the German safe of Valdas.
[edit] Review:
It's a pleasant Jim and Rollin on mission episode. Stuart Hagmann's kinetic visual style (wide angle hand-held camera shots, swift pan shots, high angle shots, upsidedown shots: see Jim wakes up in the cell and watches Nicole) helps this Romantic story that is Paul Playdon's lightest season 3 script: this is their second, after "Live Bait", and last collaboration. Recommended for fans of Joan Collins--one fashion detail I enjoy: the brown handkerchief with a pink dot print carried as a belt by Nicole. Anyway, the last couple scene is memorable and touchy: sad Jim carries dying Nicole in his arms and leaves her, accompanied by Jerry Fielding's final sentimental cue from "The Cardinal", followed by Jim and Rollin's close-ups in the running fast black Mercedes (as in "The Glass Cage, find again the same car stock footage from "The Carriers").
[edit] Stock music:
• "The Bunker" (the outdoors of the chateau; Nicole comes out of the barn to join Valdas' Mercedes; the military search party walks in the woods; Jim throws out the bugged matches; the search party uses the German shepherds to pinpoint the couple) • "The Diplomat" (party music at Valdas' chateau) • "Cinnamon Theme" (Jim first talks to Nicole at the party) • "Memory" (Rollin drugs the guard unconscious with a wet handkerchief) • "The Execution" (Rollin triggers the alarm; Jim is shot down by Razoff standing at the top of the stairs while Rollin flees by car) • "The Cardinal" (Razoff and two guards look for the study; the sad outcome when Jim leaves with Rollin in Valdas' Mercedes) • "The Contender" (Nicole frees Jim from his basement's cell) • "The Play" (sentimental cue: Nicole helps wounded Jim that stumbles upon a stone and near a tree; Nicole confesses Valdas' plan to Jim in the woods during Act IV) • "Pilot" (Jim pretends to be dead in his cell to beat up a guard; Valdas guns Nicole down) • "Operation Rogosh" (Jim and Nicole flee quickly in the woods) • "Trek" (the last manhunting scene of Act IV)
