The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Scarlet Pimpernel, released in 1934 and directed by Harold Young, is a charming film that is about a man of great adventure but there's very little adventure in the film. It's mostly people talking in drawing rooms, but it's good talk, especially when the lines are spoken by star Leslie Howard.

Based on a play and then novel by Baroness Orczy, the story is set during the French Reign of Terror, when aristocrats were being beheaded by the dozens. Howard, playing an English nobleman, adopts an alter-ego called The Scarlet Pimpernel (in a way, he's the first superhero) and helps aristocrats escape. We first see him posing as an old woman, his wagon full of fugitives.

The French ambassador, a wonderfully oily Raymond Massey, is on the trail of the Pimpernel, but Howard adopts the persona of a fop, like the twits in the Monty Python sketch, so no one could imagine he could be the man. His own wife, Merle Oberon, doesn't suspect. Howard is cold to her because she denounced some nobles and they were guillotined.

Massey uses Oberon's brother (who is secretly part of Howard's crew) as a bargaining chip to get the Pimpernel's identity. At the end of the film it looks like it's  curtains for Howard, but of course there is no doubt that he will escape.

There is very little action in this film, I guess because it started as a play. It could have used a little swashbuckling--guns are drawn, but no one is shot, and there isn't even a swordfight. Instead viewers can just marvel at how good an actor Howard was--I've admired him in everything I've seen of his. This is the first time I've seen Oberon in a film, and she was quite stunning, and gives a fine performance,