The Scarlet Pimpernel

And those "Frenchies" sought him everywhere.

Leslie Howard probably was the first British stage star who became a genuine Hollywood star as well. We tend to think of Ronald Colman, his elegant contemporary, but Colman never had the great stage career Howard did, and never made films in England - he worked (for Samuel Goldwyn mostly) in Hollywood. Howard conquered English cinema, most notably in PYGMALION (which he co-directed) and this film. His ability to play a romantic figure like Percy Blakeney and a Shavian master character like Henry Higgins shows his amazing talent. By 1935 he had been in several films opposite Frederic March and Norma Shearer (SMILIN' THROUGH), Mary Pickford (SECRETS), Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart (THE PETRIFIED FOREST), Davis and Olivia de Haviland (IT'S LOVE I'M AFTER), and Bogart and Joan Blondell (STAND-BY). He continued in this manner, eventually being in Ingrid Bergman's first American movie (INTERMEZZO), and in GONE WITH THE WIND as Ashley. For an actor who died tragically prematurely in World War II, Howard left an impressive film record.

Sir Percy Blakeney must have become a favorite role to Howard. He was to make it the basis for a final spy comedy-thriller (his last role) PIMPERNELL SMITH, bringing the character up-to-date (taking on the Nazis led by Francis Sullivan as a "Goering" clone). But the original is the better film, as there is a real attempt to capture the spirit of the 1790s, the stirrings of Regency England. The scenery looks a little forced, but it is done consciously to capture the London of 1793.

There are slightly jarring effects (inevitable in any historical movie). Nigel Bruce captures the triviality of the Prince of Wales (the future George IV), although he does strike the proper note in explaining the difficulties of attempting to rescue French political prisoners and aristocrats. But his Scottish burr is noticeable. Merle Oberon does well as the heroine, cruelly twisted into helping the French (via the detestable Chauvin, played by Raymond Massey) into betraying aristocrats to the guilloutine. Her willingness to spy for the Frenchman based on his threatening to execute her brother for treason. Only later does she accidentally realize that her noodle-headed husband is the man she is ultimately forced into betraying.

Massey played mostly villains at this point in his career, except in THINGS TO COME. However, he was to soon make a "favorable" transition, by starring on stage and in the film of ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS. His turn as the psychotic John Brown in SANTE FE TRAIL also changed his movie personae - as he shows that his psychosis is based on a genuine desire to end slavery, as opposed to the opportunistic greed of his betrayer Van Heflin. Here his Chauvin is pompous and deadly. Not a nice character at all. But he has moments to shine: When he hears Blakeney's idiotic verses about the Pimpernell, he is doing a quiet slow burn and says, "I particularly like that use of the term "Frenchies"!". When he hears Oberon bemoaning the deaths her testimony (which he forced her to give) caused in the French courts, he suddenly makes a comment too often forgotten in movies about the French Revolution: "Why is it that everyone is always bemoaning the fate of the poor aristocrats? Don't people ever recall what they did to us?!" Even Chauvin and Robespierre had some points to bring up.

Howard's gleeful performance is the anchor for it all. As clever and watchful a spy as one imagines, instantly dropping the seriousness to play the fool. Look at how he keeps bringing up the proper tying of cravats, or his miscalling the apoplectic Colonel Winterbottom "Ramsbottom". Wonderful stuff Sir Percy. Wonderful movie still.

LESLIE HOWARD and MERLE OBERON both shine in this thoroughly entertaining film classic about the man who was an effete British gentleman by day (Sir Percy) and a noble avenger who saved many of his countrymen from the guillotine. As the dandy, Leslie is an unmitigated delight, delivering some ripely amusing lines with great flair. And Merle Oberon is a vision of loveliness as his wife who almost gives his identity away before she realizes who he actually is.

It's photographed in crisp B&W splendor with elegant costumes and settings and given a rich supporting cast of players including RAYMOND MASSEY as the Frenchman anxious to trap The Scarlet Pimpernell, NIGEL BRUCE, MELVILLE COOPER and many others.

The brilliant script has many memorable lines, most of them given to Leslie Howard's character when he's playing the dandy seemingly oblivious to the hunt for the disguised Pimpernell. Especially riveting are the opening scenes depicting the ugly public executions during the French Revolution and the crowds that delighted in them.

There's never a dull moment. Well worth watching and should give fans a new impression of just how great an actor LESLIE HOWARD actually was.

This aged take on the popular novel of a foppish English hero saving aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution is an absorbing British movie; benefiting in particular from the excellent performance of Leslie Howard (one of England's greatest screen actors, despite his Hungarian ancestry), who gives the character of Percy Blakeney a humour and charm lacking from other actors who have attempted the part.

Merle Oberon also does well as his French expat wife - perhaps her best acting, even surpassing her later work opposite Olivier in 'Wuthering Heights'. Given that Howard and Oberon had a real-life love affair which started during this movie, it is interesting to note there are definite sparks between the pair on screen. Other actors in the cast are good value; Raymond Massey as the arrogant French ambassador who never thinks he can be outwitted; and Nigel Bruce, beloved later in the decade as Dr Watson, as the dullard Prince of Wales.

"They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere..." He's the cunning English spy code-named Pimpernel: master of disguises, savior to guillotine-bound aristocrats during the French Revolution, and most likely to be found in London making as big an ass of himself as credulity will allow. No one (not even his wife) would ever suspect the idiotic Sir Percy Blakeney of being the leader of an underground network of anti-Republic rebels, and it's still a joy to watch Leslie Howard, in the title role, successfully negotiating the ruse under the disdainful noses of his enemies. Without the unexpected element of farce the whole thing would be just another dated exercise in derring-do and low adventure, but the Pimpernel's foppish alter ego makes him one of the more unique (and hilarious) heroes ever to grace the silver screen. The poetry is, by the way, Sir Percy's own: "Is he in heaven, or is he in hell, that damned elusive Pimpernel?" ("It has a certain something..." he tells a giggling audience of landed gentry, "which gives it a certain...something.")

To date, I've seen three "Scarlet Pimpernels" from three different eras, but the more I see this one, the more I appreciate it for the economical little masterpiece that it is. Three years ago, when I reviewed Powell & Pressburger's "Elusive Pimpernel", I dismissed its predecessor as a 'dated period piece' remarkable only for Leslie Howard's performance; watching it again now I'd hedge no bets in saying that it excels above its successor in almost every way.

From the very beginning, long before the hero appears, it's evident that we are in for a treat. The reason? Above all, the script.

Necessary establishing information -- the Pimpernel's name and fame, the Revolution, the state of the Blakeneys' marriage -- is conveyed quickly and naturally in a few pertinent phrases here and there, without any need for static exposition. A vein of wry humour runs through almost every scene, from the Prince's opening conviction that all the excesses of the Terror can be explained away by Johnny Foreigner's lack of sporting spirit -- "why, if it weren't for fox-hunting and pheasant-shooting, we might be cruel too!" -- to Sir Percy's sleepy quip when his wife implores him to rise above trivialities for once ("Can't rise above anything longer than three syllables, m'dear -- never could") and the cheerful double meaning of his disguised assurances to a Frenchman reviling 'perfidious Albion': ''It won't take *us* long to cross the Channel, eh boys?'' But wordplay is also used to poignant effect, as when he tells Marguerite, estranged from her husband but bedazzled by the romantic image of the unknown Scarlet Pimpernel, "For all you know, he's a married man deeply in love with his wife..."

If the script is witty, humane and on occasion impassioned, it owes a great deal also to the nuanced delivery of the cast. Nigel Bruce far outshines his bumbling Watson of later years in the pat of the pompous and preening but not entirely stupid Prince-Regent-to-be; Raymond Massey's Chauvelin is intelligent as well as menacing, despite an accent that strays periodically and disconcertingly across the Atlantic from France, plus the necessary abridgement of the plot for cinematic purposes; Merle Oberon, no raving beauty to today's taste, provides all the resourcefulness and heartbreak one could ask for, playing proud, neglected Marguerite -- one can easily credit her as Orczy's 'cleverest woman in Europe'.

But casting Leslie Howard in the dual title role was a simple stroke of genius. His tall figure and bony beak of a face serve perfectly both as the languid Sir Percy, setting off a series of immaculately-fitting 'unmentionables', and as the commanding, quick-thinking Pimpernel; and the scene in which he drops from one persona to the other almost in mid-sentence upon the entry of the irate Colonel Winterbottom is a joy to watch. He is absolutely convincing as the "spineless, brainless and useless" fop, and yet he can shade intelligence and feeling back into his features at the drop of a hat in unconcealed moments that never let the audience forget the man behind the mask. His scenes with Merle Oberon as Marguerite are joint masterpieces of brittle drawing-room comedy with an undertow of unhappiness that convinces us of the former passion between them, alluded to but never shown.

Blakeney, of course, gets all the best lines, and Leslie Howard makes the most of them, mocking with exquisite insolence in his guise as licensed fool. But perhaps the third factor that really makes this film is the richness of those background moments when the starring characters are not there. The secure pomp of England epitomised in the opening shots of the changing of the guard; the revolutionary barber stropping his blade with eagerness at the thought of aristocrats' throats; the 'tricoteuses' beneath the guillotine, counting off heads with busily-clicking needles; and the instants of screen time that establish each of the 'aristos' awaiting execution -- tiny, non-speaking parts -- as individuals in their own right.

The script is intelligent, succinct and sparkling with understatement. The actors' faces speak as eloquently in the pauses as in any silent drama. The black-and-white photography is sumptuous, from the lavish ballroom scenes to the grimy "Lion D'Or" in Boulogne. And Leslie Howard is endlessly watchable in an ever-changing portrayal of leashed strength in masquerade. The only caveats I'd make are concerning the soundtrack quality -- I suspect the prints I've heard have been damaged -- and the final brief epilogue scene, which despite the gentle wordplay falls, to me, a little flat. In all other respects this would be the "Scarlet Pimpernel" I'd recommend: every time.