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Pimpernel Smith ~ 1941

12/28/2015

2 Comments

 
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What a stunningly good film!  Hot on the heels of the OTHER Leslie Howard version of the Pimpernel story (from 1934,  which I reviewed HERE),   this one from 1941 takes the theme into new and appropriately dangerous  territory.  The 1934 version was a wonderful vision of the original stories by Baroness Emmuska Orczy: a daring nobleman and his pals act the fop, while all the while saving the French nobility from citizen Robespierre's  Lady Guillotine.  This one,  though similar in spirit,  lifts the structure of the thing and drops it squarely into the worst part of WWII...the Nazis replace the murdering revolutionaries, the intellectuals replace the French nobility,  and, as Cambridge Archaeologist Horatio Smith,  Howard is a very interesting form of the elusive Pimpernel...

It's WWII, as I mentioned,  and the odd-yet-charming professor Smith is up to something.  Between lecturing students and chatting with fellow academics,  he's concocting secret and very subtle plans.  One day,  while teaching a class,  he asks for volunteers for a class trip,  for the purpose (ostensibly) to search for pre-modern Aryan civilisation in Germany;  the only catch is that they'll have to come into close contact with the Nazis.   Of course he gets his group together,  spunky young chaps with a taste for adventure,  and they're off to the Fatherland for a bit of sport.

While there,  Smith encounters the humourously evil Nazi General von Graum,  played brilliantly by Francis Sullivan (who was also wonderful in the 1948 version of Oliver Twist with Alec Guiness).  Von Graum has been given the thankless task of catching the mysterious character that has been freeing these prisoners from captivity. The good professor immediately gets on von Graum's radar,  and the verbal battles begin...with great wit and subtle ferocity:
Professor Smith:  Why, I know it's Shakespeare. I thought Shakespeare was English.

General von Graum: No, no, no. Shakespeare is a German. Professor Schuessbacher has proved it once and for all.

Professor  Smith: Dear, how very upsetting. Still, you must admit that the English translations are most remarkable.

General von Graum: Good night.

Professor Smith: Good night. Good night. "Parting is such sweet sorrow."

General von Graum: What is that?

Professor Smith: That's one of the most famous lines in German literature.


To say much more would really spoil much of the considerable fun;  suffice it to say that there is a lady involved,  and our intrepid students learn about our daring Pimpernel and get into the fun.

I thought it was a charming idea to cross-pollinate the two universes together;  it was a time when suchlike characters were badly needed,  and to make a movie like this at that time was just the sort of thing to inspire that kind of action.  Apparently this film was part inspiration for the brave acts of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg,  who helped free thousands of Jews from Nazi atrocities,  apparently telling a relative after watching it that this was the kind of thing he would like to do.   What better testament, wot?   I myself was very inspired by the general atmosphere of the thing,  as I,  like most of us,  grew up with the deadly gravitas of the second world war echoing about from every corner of world culture.

All in all it's a great classic film,  made somehow greater by the freshness of it's relative obscurity.  I wonder why more people haven't mentioned it;  it has everything that classic films are made of,  with in-jokes for the fans of the Pimpernel tales, and snappy dialogue in spades.  I hope that someday it'll get more of it's due...it really deserves the attention.

                                 I generally try not to post this many screenshots,  but it's a good looking picture!

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The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

10/28/2015

4 Comments

 
“They seek him here, they seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere
Is he in heaven or is he in hell?  That demned elusive Pimpernel”

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All my life I've been a fan of the general swashbuckler-type film.  Zorro,  Robin Hood,  Scaramouche,  Ivanhoe...these fellows, among many others, were my idols throughout my childhood,  inspiring me to be a better kid.  Bravery,  honesty, justice, kindness, loyalty, I learned it all from them.  Yet,  by those standards, one of the best of them all languished in a far corner...the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Honestly, it was the effeminate, foppish facade that he put on,  as well as the the equally soft image of a red flower, with the unlikely and awkward name 'Pimpernel" that put me off.  In Tyrone Powers' fantastic THE MARK OF ZORRO he also played the fop,  babbling about perfumes and lace,  but he also had some of the best sword fights in movie history to clear the palate of limp foppery.  The Scarlet Pimpernel wields nothing more deadly than a monocle on a stick!  Suffice to say,  I needed a deeper understanding of what it means to be brave,  and what bravery sometimes requires.

It helped immensely to have studied the French Revolution in the years since my first watching of this great adventure.  Torture and beheadings,  nobody was safe,  whether aristocrat or peasant....it must have been terrifying to the nobility in England,  who were but a small strip of water separated from the madness.  It's this environment that has earned my newfound respect for the Scarlet Pimpernel;   a very real killing ground, in spite of all the idealistic talk of
liberté, égalité, fraternité.

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Enter Sir Percy Blakeney.   Sir Percy and his chums from the posh gentleman's club called "the Blacks Club" are a bunch of well-dressed, yet stiff-upper-lipped chaps with a strong sense of justice;  they have been a-roving deep into French territories,  successfully helping the nobility to escape, right under the noses of the egalitarian barbarians.  Dressed as washer women,  guards,  farmers,  etc.,  they sneak in undetected,  much to the chagrin of the ill-fated leader of the revolution,  the intellectual, yet murderous citizen Robespierre.  Robespierre knows that the Pimpernel is a British nobleman,  but that is where his knowledge ends...he puts into play Chauvelin,  the French ambassador,  in hopes of rooting out the Scarlet Pimpernel's league.  He meets with Sir Percy,  and he's greeted with a dizzying wall of inane gibber-jabber and cleverly goofy nonsense.  Let the games begin, wot?

It's pretty brilliant stuff,  and quite my cup of tea.

The Pimpernel is played so very well by the (these days) much-ignored
Leslie Howard (in spite of his role in the overblown epic GONE WITH THE WIND).  Howard plays the yin-yang of his part with a smart and subtle sophistication;  he slips between the two Sir Percy incarnations in such a way that there's no discernible line between the two,  something that even Tyrone Power didn't quite pull off as Don Diego Vega.  Although he's a willowy wisp of a chap,  he really puts up a good show as a manly figure,  deserving of the beauty of Sir Percy's French wife,  glowingly realised by the lovely Merle Oberon.  Raymond Massey is nicely brilliant as citizen Chauvelin,  stern and irritable,  with just a touch of humour.  Add to the mix wonderfully filmed locations/sets,  and THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL is a mesmerising treat. 

I've since read the original novel by the possessing Baroness Orczy,  as well as six of the other Pimpernel novels (two of them prequels of sorts), and I'm trying to hunt down the other four.  The writing is sharp and clever,  and the tales really flesh out my understanding and appreciation of the movie.  I've become a Scarlet pimpernel convert,  and his ideals have rightly woven themselves into my personal worldview.  I've even taken to using his expression "sink meh!" when something is surprising!

That said,  I would have LOVED a sword fight!


PS:  Keep your eyes out for my upcoming review of Leslie Howard's OTHER Scarlet Pimpernel film,  the amazing 1941 WWII version of the story, in which scholars are being rescued from the Nazis!

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