Doing a quick juggling of my blogging schedule: I've moved my Favorite Film post over to Wednesday for the foreseeable future so I can indulge the meme, TOP TEN TUESDAYS on...well, Tuesdays. I'm moving Thursday's Favorite Book post to Friday and leaving Thursday open for the CRIME ALPHABET meme. Any extra book reviews and esoteric stuff, outside of Monday's Book Review will have to be wedged in there somewhere as the mood hits. Don't want to crowd the blog with too many posts in one day. (Though I have been known to do that, anyway) In case you hadn't noticed, I have a tendency to get carried away. Can't help it. I'm just having so much fun with this blogging gig. Fun is contagious. Ha!
Today's Favorite Film is PIMPERNEL SMITH starring the wonderful, understated and remarkably suave, British actor, Leslie Howard (1893 - 1943), who also directed. Leslie Howard was always one of my favorite actors - the personification of British gentility. Howard's life was tragically cut short when his plane was shot down by the Nazis (well, the Luftwaffe) in 1943. Lots of pix of Leslie Howard in this post. Here's the reason: I loved the man. He was always the gentle, yet hard as steel, leading man who did it all with his eyes. That gleam of remarkably pleasing intelligence was just always there. 
A personal aside: Here's the difference between Howard and Paul Henreid who was of similar physical type but whom I simply could not stand - the look in the eyes. That's it. Had Henreid had Howard's intelligent gleam, all would have been different. Henreid had two expressions: pained and smug. That's it. Okay, enough of that
PIMPERNEL SMITH is based, as you can guess from the title, on Baroness Orczy's classic, THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. The setting for Orczy's book is England and France during the worst of the French Revolution - The Reign of Terror. The Pimpernel (a sort of flower) is by day, Sir Percy Blakeney, the kind of Brit dandy you want to kick in the butt and by night a courageous hero, The Scarlet Pimpernel, spiriting nobles out of France and away from the services of Madame la Guillotine.
They seek him here,
They seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
They seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?
Or is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel.
PIMPERNEL SMITH takes place during another Reign of Terror, that of the Nazis. The setting is perfect: Nazi, Germany before the actual fighting war between England and Germany begins. Howard plays Oxford professor of archeology, Horatio Smith. He and some of his students are in Germany working an archeology dig professing to be looking for the origins of the 'Aryan' race so beloved of Hitler and his evil minions. Of course the Nazis welcome this expedition with open arms and more importantly, the necessary paperwork.
But, what the Nazis don't know, at least in the beginning of the film, is that the 'foppishly foolish' professor is, in reality, a British agent under cover of his Oxford credentials. (He really is an archaeologist and really teaches at Oxford.) His mission (should he choose to accept it, and he does) is to try and save victims bound for concentration camps, spiriting them out of Germany into friendlier hands.
I like the dichotomy too of the slim and agile Howard vs. the corpulent, bloated Nazi. Good casting there. Sullivan has rarely been creepier. The eerie camera work in the fog at the end is especially good, designed to make the point between the stronger spirit will-o-the-wisp nature of the professor as opposed to the turgid presence of the Nazi. Just wonderful stuff.
The scarecrow you see in some of the old PIMPERNEL SMITH movie posters makes for one of the best sequences in the films : both spooky and thrilling. The professor turns himself into a scarecrow actually positioned in a field where he can watch what's going on. During this mission, he's shot, still pretending to be a scarecrow. But he manages, nonetheless to get his quarry out of the country.
Once his students find out about the professor's wound, they put two and two together and immediately want to join in the 'game'. Spying is not so much fun, but they're young and spirited and want to help their fearless leader in any way they can.
My quibble here is with the casting. Most of the 'students' look too old to be 'young and spirited' college youths. But other than that, I'm good with this movie. I love it.
Francis L. Sullivan as the hideous Nazi commandant who knows Howard is up to something but has trouble grasping just what that 'something' is, is worth the price of admission on his own. He is truly a large lump of detestable flesh - cunning and nasty as they come.
I like the dichotomy too of the slim and agile Howard vs. the corpulent, bloated Nazi. Good casting there. Sullivan has rarely been creepier. The eerie camera work in the fog at the end is especially good, designed to make the point between the stronger spirit will-o-the-wisp nature of the professor as opposed to the turgid presence of the Nazi. Just wonderful stuff.
There's a vague sort of love interest too, when the professor is called upon to save a Polish woman who's father is being held at a camp. But basically this is a quiet, intelligent thriller with some terrific escapades. An underrated film deserving of a bigger audience. One of its more interesting quirks, at least for me, is that this film was shot before most nations in the West supposedly knew what was going on in the camps. At least that's the excuse for inaction I've always heard.
If you belong to Netflix, here's some good news: PIMPERNEL SMITH is available for instant view through your computer or TV. How great is that? They also have the Richard Grant version (a good one) of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL available for instant view. PLUS the Anthony Andrews version (I love Anthony Andrews) available on dvd as well as the original with Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey. I've lined them all up. (No I am not paid by Netflix to say this.) Ha!
