In Scaramouche Stewart Granger hides among a troupe of strolling players while vowing vengeance upon Mel Ferrer who killed Granger's foster brother Richard Anderson. Vengeance however is not a simple matter.
Mel Ferrer plays a foppish privileged aristocrat, favorite of the French Queen Marie Antoinette who's got a deadly blade and killed many a rival, political and personal. Who he has in his sights now is Anderson who is another aristocrat, but a minor one who has taken to hanging out with revolutionaries and publishing incendiary pamphlets.
Ferrer is like a hired gun in the old west, the kind who would goad some poor schnook into a draw and then kill him in 'self defense'. He's unpopular, but damned effective. For Granger to take him on, he's going to have to learn the art of fencing and learn it quickly.
Granger has two women who love him as well, Eleanor Parker from the troupe of players and Janet Leigh another aristocrat who in this case has been promised to wed Ferrer. That gives the Granger-Ferrer rivalry an added incentive for both men to kill the other.
The sets on Scaramouche were quite lavish, why they weren't considered for an Oscar nomination is a mystery. The cast settles nicely into familiar roles and performs well. Elizabeth Risdon and Lewis Stone play Anderson's parents and Granger's guardian. They get a stipend from Granger's unknown father to conceal his origins. The last three films for Lewis Stone, this one, The Prisoner of Zenda and All The Brothers Were Valiant were all done with Stewart Granger.
Scaramouche is a nice tale of adventure and romance in those final days before the French Revolution. It's interesting to speculate just how all these characters might have survived the coming Reign Of Terror in a few years. Things got so insane in France then, it's anybody's guess. One could write all kinds of speculation.
Still I would speculate and still enjoy Scaramouche.
