Race to Bombay
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Race to Bombay |
| Original title | La nouvelle malle des Indes |
| Country of production | France , Germany , Austria , Switzerland |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1981 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Christian-Jaque |
| script | Christian-Jaque, Michel Christian Davet |
| music | Gérard Calvi |
| camera | Marcello Masciocchi |
| occupation | |
| |
Race to Bombay is a four-part Franco-German television film from 1981 that is one of the four-part adventure games . It is a film adaptation of the novel La Nouvelle malle des Indes by Jacques Robert . Directed by Christian-Jaque .
action
In October 1829 , the English naval lieutenant Thomas Waghorn ( Christian Kohlund ) and the French naturalist Martial de Sassenage ( Jean-Pierre Bouvier ) set out from London to reach Bombay (today's Mumbai ) within three months . Waghorn would like to prove that the route around the Cape of Good Hope , which was common at the time and which takes six months from London to Bombay, is not the fastest route to India . The journey goes as follows:
Part 1: (ZDF: November 29, 1981)
From London over the English Channel to northern France, from there via Paris to the Swiss border
Thomas Waghorn flashes off at the East India Company with the idea of establishing a postal connection to India via the Mediterranean Sea and Suez, which is significantly faster than their ships around the Cape, which need six months for this. Nevertheless, he founds the Global Trade Company in London with his French friend Martial de Sassenage, whom he met in a fight in a pub, and wants to run the company on his own. He promised to reach Bombay in less than three months by way of France and Suez, and he even received written confirmation of his departure from the East India Company on October 28, 1829, to be presented to the governor in Bombay.
A wealthy London shipowner (Keramos), who fears the loss of his business on the Cape Route, chases after him the unscrupulous villain Taylor who, with his cronies Bartholdy and Josephe, is supposed to prevent Waghorn from arriving in Bombay. To do this, however, he should initially only effectively stop him, not kill him. (Taylor later doesn't take this part of the job that seriously anymore ...).
Martial de Sassenage is a naturalist and, on behalf of Baron Georges de Cuvier, wants to bring Bengal tigers to Paris for the Jardin des Plantes in India . He travels ahead and makes an appointment with Waghorn in Amiens . For the time being, Thomas Waghorn only comes to Boulogne-sur-Mer , where an uprising against King Charles the Tenth has just been put down and no traveler is allowed to leave the city. He saves the life of a fleeing convict who, after Waghorn made it to Amiens through connections, locks the persecutors Bartholdo and Joseph in a barn.
While Tom and Martial are talking about their plans for Suez in a restaurant, two Sûreté officials notice them (Chief Inspector Fontanier and his assistant Vacherin) and cling to their heels. They consider them suspicious spies working with the Saint-Simonists and scheming against the king. In Paris, the boss of the Sûreté instructs them to pursue the two of them to the French border and, if necessary, abroad as well. However, the two officials have no idea how big the foreign country is.
A theater actor from Paris is bribed by Taylor, and Tom and Martial follow him to Paris. They miss their meeting with the Saint-Simonists, because Taylor leads them into the catacombs and chains them there. As if by a miracle, a group of medical students soon passes by with loud music, looking for material for anatomical studies in the catacombs and freeing Tom and Martial from their predicament. The two have nothing better to do than to pursue the important job of slapping the actor in the face - with Taylor and his assistants clinging to their heels again soon after.
Tom and Martial take the carriage to Chalon-sur-Saône and from there the boat in the direction of Lyon , but discover Taylor and his two assistants on the bank, who are riding ahead to the next pier. To avoid the reception, Tom and Martial flee to the bank in the stolen dinghy and soon afterwards set off for Switzerland. Fontanier and Vacherin, who are also on the boat, have to rummage through the index cards of hostels in the surrounding departments , are exceptionally successful and find their trail near the Swiss border . Taylor realizes he's lost track of the two and the three split up. Taylor travels to Marseille to embark there for Alexandria. Bartholdo and Josephe are supposed to travel to Trieste via Switzerland and from there to Alexandria. There are only these two ship connections to Alexandria.
Part 1 ends with Tom and Martial stopping at a hostel on the Swiss border , where the Customs Inspectorate is currently under investigation, as far too many Swiss watches have been smuggled into France recently. Silk is also smuggled under the skin of sheep and then kept under straw on which Fontanier and Vacherin go to sleep for lack of shelter. Vacherin discovers the silk, but is asked on behalf of the king to immediately rest and fall asleep, which he then does.
Part 2 (ZDF: December 1, 1981)
Through the Swiss Alps and northern Italy to Venice and Trieste , from there departure by ship to Alexandria
Two Swiss women slide a box with Swiss watches under Tom and Martial, which is promptly discovered by the customs inspection. Together with the unsuspected smugglers, they are then allowed to spend a well-guarded night in the hostel. Fortunately, an accomplice of the smugglers helps them escape from the trap and to Lake Geneva . Fontanier and Vacherin also wake up in the clutches of the Customs Inspectorate, and it takes a long time before they can make their colleagues understand that they are from the Sûreté and that it was not them who smuggled the silk. On the paddle steamer La Suisse on Lake Geneva, a pupil draws a portrait of Thomas Waghorn, who with Sassenage will soon take the route across the Alps to Italy, closely followed by Fontanier and Vacherin. Bartholdo and Josephe happened to discover Waghorn's picture among the pupils' portrait drawings and, using ruthless methods, quickly discovered that the two adventurers were on their way to Milan and Trieste.
In the snow-covered pass region, it is so cold that the bodies of the deceased are kept in a chapel until spring. Undaunted, Tom and Martial set themselves up for the night next to two corpses, but then they are still frightened at the sight of Fontanier and Vacherin as they also approach the chapel with their mules. On entering the chapel, the agents are initially frightened by the sight of the four corpses kept in the chapel, but are soon ecstatic about their impending promotion, as they only have to organize the coffins from the village and bring the dead spies to Paris.
Martial falls from his horse on a steep, snow-covered slope and has to spend a few days in the St. Bernhard Hospice with a badly sprained foot . He urges Tom to first travel to Milan alone. Waghorn meets the English Lord Ovingston in the monastery, who supports the secret resistance group of the Carbonari in Italy against Austrian rule and has an appointment with them at Ivrea's , but is shadowed by an agent and is therefore in mortal danger. He sends Waghorn with the Times under his arm to the Carbonari, who first put him in chains and then, after a few days, finally someone who speaks English arrives, they don't really release him. In northern Italy, foreigners are not often free in those troubled times, as Martial de Sassenage is also able to find out, who just managed to give a Parisian opera singer a message for the French consul before his arrest. The arrest was arranged by the two Sûreté agents, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead and who now get on well with the Austrian police director Schulz.
Since Martial Compte de Sassenage is a nephew of the Attorney General in Paris, the French consul in Milan forces the naturalist's immediate release and, conveniently, Austrian protection on the trip to Venice. Thomas Waghorn ends up in Milan with the English-speaking Carbonari, who is wounded by a gunshot, which forces the two of them to seek refuge on the estate of Count Conte Lupo. His house is also monitored by the Austrian police, who notice that the Countess Comtessa Vanini is driving to Venice in a carriage with the two men shortly afterwards. However, she is let through all bans as she is known to be in a relationship with Schulz. Fontanier and Vacherin soon followed.
Tom is trapped in the palace in Venice, the Comtessa has arranged the locking of all doors and takes care of her guest personally in her bed until Waghorn rappels out of a window at night, wanders through Venice's alleys and almost directly into the hands or gondolas of the Austrian police, the French Sûreté or the now alarmed guard of the Comtessa falls. The latter are initially awarded the contract, closely followed by the police gondola. Fortunately, Martial de Sassenage is standing on a bridge and happens to have a rope with him, so that Thomas Waghorn can be pulled onto the bridge and escape to Trieste. The Comtessa can only save her uncomfortable situation, in which she has brought herself through the adventure with the Englishman, by accepting Schulz's proposal.
In Trieste, Tom and Martial as well as Fontanier and Vacherin have to discover that they missed the ship to Alexandria by a few hours. The two adventurers decide to take a quick ride along the coast in order to reach the ship after all, while the French secret agents let themselves be guided to another ship, the Santa Maria, whose safety on closer inspection is probably no longer the same as at that time would have complied with applicable safety guidelines. Bartholdo and Josephe have already arrived in Alexandria, where they met with Taylor, who has already successfully spread the rumor to the local authorities that the plague had broken out on the ship from Trieste .
Part 3 (ZDF: December 5, 1981)
Arrival in Alexandria, from there to Cairo and Suez , across the Red Sea to Arabia
Tom and Martial reach the port city of Alexandria by sailing ship. There is immediate trouble here, because the ship is quarantined and the captain has to report the escape the next morning after Tom and Martial's escape to the coast - with the result that the police meticulously checked all foreigners. The two friends can go into hiding in Alexandria with an Egyptian friend with French roots who gives them his son Karim as a guide to Cairo. Fontanier and Vacherin, who were shipwrecked on the Santa Maria , were washed up with the waves on the coast of the Sahara , and who, fortunately found by a local and come to Alexandria on donkeys, immediately by the police, are less lucky arrested and locked in the fort on suspicion of plague.
Karim brings Tom and Martial safely to his uncle in Cairo, from where they initially manage to organize a meeting with the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha and convince the ruler of the idea of a new postal route from Alexandria via Cairo to Red Sea should lead. It is the only official support Waghorn should ever receive for his project. Waghorn and Sassenage receive private support to lead them to a competent dealer for female slaves, since no man is allowed to live in the neighborhood without a wife. So they buy two slaves, which they give away to Karim a few nights later in view of their imminent departure.
The two of them receive significantly less support from Taylor and his two henchmen, who commission the thief king in Cairo to arrest them shortly before their departure, to lock them up and, after personal inspection by Taylor, to have them disappear, preferably dead and in a safe manner. The two are arrested and imprisoned immediately. The King of Thieves makes an appointment with Taylor at the Chephren pyramid near Giza to throw the prisoners packed in sacks alive into a well. Almost at the end of his wishes, Taylor had to watch that Egyptians slipped out of the bags they had brought with them and immediately ran away with the donkeys. After the kidnapping, Karim's uncle alerted the local police chief, who is said to have had contacts with the king of thieves.
Fontanier and Vacherin have made it to the French consulate in Cairo, where they meet another highly suspicious individual, through whom they temporarily lose sight of their interest in Waghorn and Sassenage. It is about the French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion , who had deciphered the hieroglyphic script eight years earlier (which the two secret agents did not suspect) and who is currently deciphering other hieroglyphs. The consul is taken with the Sûreté agents. It was men of their own type who made the French crown famous. He informs the two secret agents that the suspect Frenchman is on his way to Abu Simbel and that he does not know who he is meeting with there. In reality, however, the consul knew exactly what Champollion was up to. (In fact, Champollion had just returned from a three-month French-Tuscan expedition to Wadi Halfa near Abu Simbel and was now preparing, at the end of December 1829, the transport of innumerable inscriptions to Paris and Florence. In terms of suspicion, Champollion left little to be desired, he had 1816–1821 repeatedly engaged in politics and had to go into exile several times).
While Fontanier and Vacherin in Abu Simbel are allowed to deal with local entrepreneurs of a company that is export-oriented in the manufacture of mummies , and that intelligence agents are an excellent starting point, Tom and Martial take a camel caravan led by Karim through the desert towards Suez Move. On the same route, Taylor and his henchmen hurried ahead, who set up a deadly ambush with local bandits. Karim's caravan is warned, but still falls into the trap, and only at the last moment - Taylor is about to shoot Waghorn - the Egyptian army, alerted by the traders, comes to the rescue. Taylor shoots anyway, but Martial throws Tom aside and saves his life. Fontanier and Vacherin are also rescued by two English women specializing in criminology who had observed that the two French had fallen into the trap of the mummy company and had taken their weapons. They are colleagues because the women are on the road on behalf of the British secret service. With them the French will soon reach the Red Sea and only dream of Paris.
Taylor turns to the chief of an Egyptian army unit, for whom he pretends to be a journalist, and manages to have him take him along with Bartholdo and Josephe on the way to Yemen, where an uprising is to be put down.
In Suez, Tom and Martial are disappointed to find that the announced steamship from Bombay has not arrived. The cause are problems in the coal supply. So it is with sailing ships slowly along the unsafe Red Sea to the south. They are traveling with two haberdashery sellers they met on the way and who, among other things, have a bag with poisonous snakes with them. The ship keeps stopping to load freshwater and falls into the hands of pirates during one of these stops. The pirates are among the rebels that the Egyptian army is supposed to fight. However, they do not mind stopping the ship when suddenly two shipwrecked people who are calling for help are floating on the water and taking them on board. It happens to be Chief Inspector Fontanier and his assistant Vacherin, who were once again shipwrecked.
Tom has enough with the slow drive. With the venomous snakes he manages to cause confusion for a brief moment. He takes the burning torch, threatens to blow up the powder kegs, and has the pirates disarmed. But one of them shoots, doesn't hit, but Tom falls the torch out of his hand and onto the powder kegs. All jump into the water and soon find themselves in the desert, where they are tied up behind horses and camels of the rebels and are allowed to march to their camp and are rudely thrown into a tent.
Part 4 (ZDF: December 8, 1981)
By ship across the Arabian Sea to Bombay
The rebel commander arrives the next morning after secret agents Fontanier and Vacherin have been freed from the prisoners' tent by their English colleagues. Tom and Martial are shown into the tent of the rebel leader - in which Tom, to his great astonishment, recognizes an English comrade (James) from his time in India. England not only supports the rebels against the Egyptian army morally, but also competently leads them. Waghorn also receives his bag washed up on the beach and found by the rebels back - with all the documents, including the still perfectly legible letter of confirmation from the East India Company dated October 28, 1829 from London. Together with the rebels it is now back to the Red Sea and on to the onward journey to Bombay, while Taylor and his two curses waste some time cursing with the Egyptian army. Soon they too will see that they finally come to Bombay.
Not shown, but addressed several times, are the coal dumps that have now been created in Mokha on the Yemeni coast, which can now ensure the supply for steam shipping. Tom and Martial win the race to Bombay a few days before Taylor and his two henchmen, but later than hoped in Arabia due to problems with the sails. In the port of Bombay they see the steamship, which has been waiting for its journey to the Red Sea for some time.
Vacherin and Fontanier - from now on in this hierarchy, because Vacherin rebels against his superior and takes over the command - make their way to the French consulate. Two cows are in the way in an alley, the driver stops and waits - Vacherin's collar bursts and he tries to scare the animals away. In this scene, filmed in India and with extras with language difficulties, a street vendor actually attacked Patrick Préjean, assuming the French wanted to hit the cows - the chaotic scene was initially shot again and later integrated into the film. It wasn't until late that the film team succeeded in making the Indian understand that a film was being shot here for the cinema and that the cow shouldn't really be beaten. The next scene of the two agents takes place in the Bombay prison.
Thomas Waghorn does not meet the governor, who is on a hunt and is rarely there, in the palace. With Martial he tries on his own to find the governor in the surrounding area, to get his signature with the date and to inform him that the coal for the steamship is ready in Mokha and that it can start now. Taylor plays off his previous contacts with a fanatical killer organization, and they are immediately back on Tom and Martial's heels. The two get lost in the wilderness, fall into the hands of the murderous sect, end up in chains behind bars in an old Hindu temple town and wait for their bloodless execution (the fanatics cannot see blood and are only allowed to kill without bloodshed). Tom and Martial rub their hands bloody and, after their chains are unlocked, open their fists - the white-clad killers flee immediately. Martial, however, is quickly captured again and is said to be burned, Tom manages to escape and is able to go into hiding in a nearby village, where members of the royal hunting party soon appear. According to Tom's advice, they find the hideout of the gang of criminals in the temple city, where Martial is held by the leader.
In the end, Tom finally gets to know the governor, explains everything to him, and gets a signature and date. Martial is rescued, the leader of the sect does not survive the scene, Taylor and his two henchmen are taken to the Bombay prison with the kindness they deserve, and Martial de Sassenage is given a living Bengali tiger for the museum in Paris. The last scene takes place on the paddle steamer sailing towards the Red Sea, and Vacherin does not manage to overtake the steamer with the furious Fontanier in the rowing boat. A quiet return trip to Paris and England is guaranteed.
Additional information
As far as Waghorn is concerned, the film is based on a true story. Thomas Fletcher Waghorn (1800–1850) actually reached Bombay in an adventurous tour in 4 months and 21 days in 1829 (or 1832) - due to adverse circumstances in more than 3 months, but still in an absolute record time. The entrepreneur set up a regular mail service that reliably kept to the 90 days from 1835 and which he ran alone until around 1840. In the Egyptian desert in particular, he set up complex logistics. In 1842, Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha took over the company.
According to the information in the bonus material on the DVD, the production demanded unusual strains from the actors. Christian Kohlund is said to have said later that he had never made such a strenuous film. The film was shot at many different locations, from Switzerland at −20 ° C to Tunisia and India at temperatures of 50 ° C. The team had to deal with temperature differences of 70 degrees within a few days. After a sandstorm in the desert, the matt-sanded windows of the filming team's vehicles had to be knocked out. Problems with language difficulties arose especially in India. Christian Kohlund could not be doubled and injured his chin so badly when he fell from a carriage that the scar on his chin could not be compensated for by the mask.
For the effort, the end result was apparently relatively modest compared to other adventure quads in this series. The audience ratings in Germany in 1981 were between 34 and 40%.
literature
- Oliver Kellner and Ulf Marek: Seewolf & Co. - The great adventure four-part series by ZDF , Schwarzkopf and Schwarzkopf, ISBN 3-89602-632-1
Web links
- Race to Bombay in the Internet Movie Database (English)