Smoke 'em if ya' Gottem

The movie was THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS - a World War 2 movie filmed in 1954. It was in color, and there no obvious lines that made the film seem particularly dated. It was a look back, a history-related tale, that would - by its very nature - be dated. Military clothing has not changed all that much, and given that my familiarity with British culture of the mid-20th century is limited - it was a less-than-stirring recounting of how the Allies fooled the Germans by planting fake documents on a dead body and allowing it to wash up on a shore where it would be found. I thought it credible, at least.

What was INCREDIBLE was the pervasive depiction of cigarette smoking in the picture. We all know it's no longer PC to smoke, we know how bad it is for our collective healths, and we have to shake our heads at the smokers who must stand in the cold or rain, huddling in the smoker's hole to maintain their habits. (After gaining fifty pounds after quitting, I'm wondering if the smokers are simply exhibiting a different form of diet plan.)

The film features wartime Brits smoking in the crowded movie theater, in restaurants, taxis, sidewalks, and officer's clubs - basically, anywhere people stood, sat, walked, slept, ate, or drank. When the theater scene was depicted, I couldn't help but think what a mess that would have been. The patrons were jammed in, round-shouldered with the overcrowding, everyone rocking back and forth in hilarious laughter under the heavy cloud of smoke. Some had cigarettes clamped in their lips so they could clap their hands. Others were laughing with such wide-open mouths that they might have swallowed the cigarettes had they not clutched them between their fingers, while slapping their neighbor on the back. (That always makes a joke funnier.)

It was almost like looking at another world seeing the habits that everyone used to tolerate. The kicker for me was the spy. O'Reilly from Dublin. (He's really from Germany, sporting a fake brogue and passport.) Toward the end of the movie, he's camped in his second-story room, chain-smoking to the point of lighting another while the cigarette he's working on is little past half-smoked. The clock strikes the hour, marking the time he is to radio back to Germany on his secret suitcase telegraph transmitter.

He takes a deep final drag from the smoke, squeezes it between his middle finger and his thumb, and flicks it across the room. Oh, it's still lit, all right. He just needs the finger to tap-tap-tap the message back to Hitler. Martin genuine! Martin genuine! Martin genuine! Room on fire! Yikes!

Apart from being astounded, it make me think of my young buddy Mark, who was smoking in his mother's kitchen. We were maybe seventeen years old. Eighteen. Finished the cigarette, dropped it to the linoleum floor and crushed it out, twisting shoe against it. Then he stepped away. I asked him who cleaned up his butts, and he supposed his mother did it. Then there was Tim, another buddy who - in being particularly emphatic in his storytelling - lost his grip on his smoke and it flew onto my sofa, burning a hole in the cushion before he could retrieve it. I told him he needed smoking lessons.

I'm wondering now if we'd been better schooled in the art back then, we might today be allowed to enjoy a smoke with our pint of beer, at least those who still care to. We smokers back then had no skills to go along with our practice.

Probably easier in the long run to post a No Smoking sign, than to list the Continuing Education classes in Remedial Smoking.


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