Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Ploydsge just watch it!

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

theowinthrop In 1935 Leslie Howard made one of his finest films in the historic romance, THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. He played the hero, Sir Percy Blakeney, who was a society leader but also a society twit, who spent time staring through an eyeglass criticizing the way a man's cravat was tied, or a sleeve was cut, or how Romney was painting his wife. But when alone with his intimates he was "The Scarlet Pimpernel" who planned the rescue of French aristocrats from the guillotine. He and his gang are fighting a war to the death against Citizen Chauvin (Raymond Massey), the Jacobin agent/minister to Britain, who is seeking to end the rescues. In between is his beloved, but seemingly tarnished wife (Merle Oberon) who is trying to save her captured brother, and unknowingly reveals her husband's secret to Chauvin. The conclusion of this adventure film was very exciting and surprising. But there was and is a problem with THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. Despite Baroness Orczy's marvelous writing ability (try her detective tales of THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER as a good follow-up), she was deeply impressed with the old order of aristocracy. Only once, in the film, did a sense of balance come through - and oddly enough out of the mouth of the villain. Merle Oberon had testified for the French Revolutionary Court against some aristocrats, dooming them (by her testimony) to death. She has never forgiven herself (and it has blackened her reputation). In bemoaning this Massey gets disgusted and spits out, "Why is it that everyone is always condemning what happened to the poor aristocrats and never think of what they did to us?!" It's a good point, but because we dislike Massey and his boss (Robespierre, of course) we never stop to consider it for long. Howard was able to repeat and improve on the original film in 1942 with PIMPERNEL SMITH, where as Professor Horatio Smith he uses his archaeological digs in Germany (for proof of an Aryan civilization before Greece or Rome) to rescue intellectuals and victims of the Nazi Reich. Here his opponent is General Von Graum (Francis L. Sullivan) who is like Chauvin in his sharpness and pomposity. He is an obvious knock at Hermann Goering (who was obese like Sullivan) and has Goering's sham bonhomie and his total vicious streak. The writer of the screenplay must have had some discussion with German refugees in the know (notice the bits about Von Graum throwing a tantrum and then turning about and offering German chocolate to someone who has come through for him). The film also uses Howard to brilliant advantage in one sequence, disguised as a bureaucrat, who he himself states was the most disagreeable person he ever thought up. The ultimately efficient German bureaucrat is totally inhuman - a talking machine of bossy efficiency. Percy Blakeney was disguised several times, as an old crone and a soldier, but never someone so disagreeable.And that is the difference. THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL deals with the 1790s and the Reign of Terror. It was a century and a half in the past, and really could not annoy the French too much (though one wonders what it's box office was like in France). Britain and Germany were at war in 1942, and the film couldn't present even one moment where Von Graum could make a comment like Chauvin's outburst. As a matter of historic record, Chauvin had some point about the sins of the Ancien Regime as opposed to the Revolutionaries. Knowing what we know now about Von Graum's buddies, he would not have been able to say much.The closing of the movie was a memorable speech by Howard, about how Germany's entrance into war was not the start of it's road to glory but to it's destruction. True enough in 1945 - 1950 or so. And when he manages to take advantage of Von Graum's brief distraction to vanish into the night, the Nazi fires his gun into the empty space. "I'll be back," we hear Howard repeat twice. It is haunting, because of his real fate of being shot down in the war by a Nazi plane. Howard physically did not return, but spiritually he did with the men at D-Day all the way to V.E.Day.

Igenlode Wordsmith On the face of it, I don't ask much of a film: only - only! - that it should make me laugh and cry and catch my breath, and stir my blood in equal measure. Strange, then, how rare this seems to be... and how few films earn the final accolade by almost forcing me to review them! I had not the slightest intention, this morning, of writing about "Pimpernel Smith". But now that I sit down afterwards and try to work, I find my attention wandering back to it again and again. Clearly, I must set down this review, or I shall never get anything done... and there can be few stronger tributes to the power of a film.Leslie Howard, of course, makes or breaks the whole. As producer, director and starring actor, his name is scrawled - literally - on the film from its opening titles; indeed it gives us a chance to recognise the penmanship on the mysterious hand-written notes that recur! Unsurprisingly, in some ways this is very much a one-man vehicle. If Leslie Howard's charms escape you, the whole production is probably a dead loss - but for any fan of his earlier films, it is little short of unalloyed delight."Pimpernel Smith" takes much of its resonance from the subtle parallels with Baroness Orczy's story of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The latter is openly referred to only in the title, but acknowledged in a dozen ways, from the leading character who cloaks an incisive mind beneath a foolish mask to the young acolytes who aid and yet rashly put him at risk, the woman who is set to spy out the identity of a beloved one's potential saviour, and of course the closed frontiers and despotic arm of a new-fledged state - not Revolutionary France, but a Nazi Germany not yet at open war. Above all, the echoes lie in the ingenious guises and plans for escape, always one twist ahead of both the enemy and the viewers themselves. By the end of the film, I was suspecting the most innocent characters of being the nondescript Professor Smith in disguise... and I'm still not certain about the indignant lady on the Cook's Tour!The references, however, are never obtrusive and always remain subtle; and of course perhaps the chief of these is the casting of Leslie Howard himself. Along with a humane and intelligent script, it was his outstanding depiction of the title role that raised the 1934 film of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" above the average. Even today, the association is immediate. Less than ten years after the original, the dual performance of their star must have been inescapable.From vacuous fop to absent-minded professor... and yet it is to Howard's credit that his Professor Smith is not a carbon copy of Sir Percy Blakeney, but a distinct and undoubtedly charming character in his own right. For a moment, rapt in admiration of an Aphrodite, he is startlingly handsome. But for the most part, peering owlishly over a newspaper or buried beneath a deplorable hat, he is more the living spit of bespectacled Charles Hawtrey in some post-war "Carry On". He has developed the baggy amble to a fine art, and the knack of deprecation and inoffensive insolence almost without effort; and the role of gentle academic is not a pose, but the guiding principle behind all his unlikely impersonations, even that of the part of hero. The Professor, above all, is a man who hates destruction and waste.Passionate screen kisses rarely move me; oddly enough, a handful of restrained moments of tenderness in this film did. It may be a carefully-scripted star vehicle, but few enough of those choose to celebrate the clever and the unassuming. I like Professor Smith very much indeed.But even the quietest hero needs a villain as foil, and Francis L. Sullivan is also outstanding here as the elephantine von Graum, a Nazi general who turns out to be far less stupid than one might assume. It's hard not to suspect the character of being a lampoon on Goering, and from the start we are invited to laugh at him; but for all his girth and his struggles with "the English sense of humour", von Graum is brighter by far than most of his staff, and sometimes even one step ahead of the viewer, which makes it hard to be complacent on our heroes' behalf. He may rant and foam for lack of proof, but the net is tightening... and without the advantage of Orczy's predetermined plot, the unexpected twist at the end of this film could all too easily go either way. Unfortunately, heroism is not necessarily defined by survival...In fact, in retrospect, I feel that the ending (which I won't reveal here) was perhaps the one weak point. Unlike the Basil Rathbone wartime pictures (there are echoes of "Pimpernel Smith" in the subsequent, not at all bad, "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon"), the anti-Nazi sentiments of the hero's set-piece speech are not dated or tendentious to modern ears. Indeed, Leslie Howard's shadowed intensity remains one of the most effective shots in the film. The only trouble is that it's so good that it becomes a hard scene to top, and the actual finale comes off as somewhat trite by comparison.But that's with hindsight. At the time, the only thing of which I was fully conscious was that, already pre-disposed in that direction by "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and "Pygmalion", I had just become a raving Leslie Howard fan! Every time I catch myself whistling 'Tavern in the Town' without thinking, over the next few days, I shall know why... and smile.

James Miller Good wartime propaganda film, with Leslie Howard updating his Scarlet Pimpernel role to Germany just pre-war, and playing it just about perfectly - less foppish than Sir Percy and the better for it; why did the Pimpernel have to behave as quite such a pratt in normal society?The Nazis are not treated as a bunch of baby-spearing psychopaths here, partly because they're played by a group of gentle English character actors, and partly because Francis L. Sullivan as General von Graum is too rounded and too amusing a personality. Before the elusive Pimpernel starts to obsess him, he spends most of his time reading PG Wodehouse, Lewis Carroll et el to get British Humour, which he vainly dismisses a myth – and indeed will forbid its mention when he takes charge of London. Only at the end does he play more to type, delivering a paean to the glory of violence, which I don't think was an explicit part of the Nazi's ideology, but I don't think they'll sue.I thought the Professor / Pimpernel's group of archaeology students too tally-ho, too old, too boring, but Mary Morris as a novice, but intuitive, Gestapo agent was beautiful in a very Ingrid Bergman way; the passing of the Professor's love for a statue of Aphrodite was believable under her watery gaze.**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**Look out for the old `they've gone out by the fire escape' trick, when in fact they've stayed in the room. The script-writer shame-facedly apologises for this ancient ruse by having Howard saying `It's an old trick, but it often seems to work'. And the 3 metre escape at the end, in a puff of smoke, is hilarious. Forget Bond villains – General von Graum's `Why don't you stand there by that two-foot high gate, yes, it is the Swiss border, and have a cigarette' takes the all-time biscuit.

tmack Like many, I very much liked this version of the Scarlet Pimpernel, brought to modern day times. Most importantly, it exposes the lack of freedom in Germany and the Concentration Camps when everyone else said they did not know about them. Equally pleasing was Francis Sullivan's role as General Von Graum. You could hate him in a second, especially when he ran Wagner, the poor clerk out of his office as an introduction. This movie should be seen more than it has been seen.