The caped crusader… The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), BFI, Cinema Unbound

I had agreed to do it, but my heart remained unconvinced… I hate remakes! 

Michael Powell

  

In her informative, and witty introduction, the BFI’s Bryony Dixon explained the troubled gestation of a film most of those involved weren’t that keen to make. The story had been very successfully filmed by Alexander Korda in 1933 and by Samuel Goldwyn were keen on a Technicolor remake whilst Korda was keen on a further pay out on the rights. But apart from Powell and Pressburger’s wariness, David Niven also didn’t want to do it, fearing he couldn’t match technique of the previous Pimpernel, Leslie Howard, in effectively playing two characters.

 

I watched The Marvels (2023) with my son over the weekend and it does occur to me that Baroness Orczy’s character is one of the original superheroes, a man of almost uncanny wit and intelligence whose secret identity is to play a buffoonish nobleman, Sir Percy Blakeney, who’s own wife doesn’t even suspect that he is the man rescuing French aristos from La Guillotine.

 

Bryony said that there are not many prints around and at one time even Powell thought it was a lost film but luckily it does survive and today the BFI were presenting a good Technicolor print with lovely colours even if there were one or two issues with the sound but this is what our analogue fetish is all about. The film also doesn’t appear to have been available on home media since the VHS era… hopefully that will be rectified for, whilst it’s not an Archer’s classic, it’s certainly a well-made and delightful film: Mr Niven may be no Leslie Howard but he is the very best David Niven and that is quite enough for this good humoured romp through post-revolutionary France.

Cyril Cusack

 

Korda did not agree and quoted the French navet, meaning a turnip, feeling that this film was perhaps a Super Navet – Super, Super Turnip. P&P’s Hollywood screening with Goldwyn also did not go well, as the great man walked out on them, leaving his wife to pass on his legal threats. By all accounts film failed to cover anything like its production costs which is not surprising given that it wasn’t released in the US for another five years… studios barely releasing non-confirming product is not a new thing in Tinsel Town.

 

Time, and our familiarity with the film maker’s style have worked in favour of our deeper appreciation of the film. There are fabulous locations with chateaux in Loire Valley and Mont St Michel, especially near the end as the quick tides confound Chauvelin’s men surrounding the rock. Despite their reluctance, the filmmakers had a good time making the film, enjoying the locations and the wine and it shows in the good humour of the cast.

 

This is certainly a film more sinned against than sinning… and some would have you believe the same for The Marvels although there’s nothing quite as outlandish as that film’s super heroics in the Pimpernel’s world in which the laws of physics and drama are firmly adhered to. By day, Sir Percy and by night, or other time requiring it, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and the whole of France know his name.

 

Margaret Leighton

All revolutions are started by idealists. Some of them end in… runs across the date 1792 written in running blood red as the camera shifts to the view of La Guillotine slicing another aristo’s head off. IN the midst of this great terror the legend grows of a man who is staging daring rescues of certain nobles, The Scarlet Pimpernel. Immediately Powell and Pressburger show us an audacious rescue with Mr Niven quite unrecognisable as a rustic hag. His band have created a trap for the revolutionaries and lock them in a tower as they rescue a family.

 

Cut to a band of revolutionary troops guarding the Loire who dare this invisible adversary to cross. They meet an old crone (or similar but acceptable modern term) and let her pass with her cart full of melons only for a squadron of French troops to arrive in seeming hot pursuit, but it’s another bluff as these are more of the SP’s men, forcing their way past the checkpoint to safety and to England!

 

Now we meet the scheming Chauvelin (Cyril Cusack) who has managed to apprehend Armand St. Juste (Edmond Audran) a French MP but who has a sister Marguerite Blakeney (Margaret Leighton) married to a useless Englishman Sir Percy Blakeney (David Niven). Chauvelin tries to exert power over St Juste but is shocked to see a message from the Pimpernel taped to the bottom of his glass. They may seek him here, but he's always there...

 

Bustin' some rhymes

Now, in a possible nod to Blimp, we find Sir Percy in the steam baths at Boodles Club in London where he annoys the old generals and English gentry with a poem he has made up about the mysterious masked man:

 

They seek him here

They seek him there

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere

Is he in heaven or is he in… well

That damned elusive Pimpernel

 

None of the older gentlemen are impressed with this fop but meanwhile he’s organising his men in a back room just as the old soldiers discuss how he and his kind need to be enlisted to see real action. But Blakely is not the brightest popinjay in the smart set, that’d be the Prince of Wales (Jack Hawkins, playing against type) who arrives in the latest fashion only to be deflated as Blakely tears into the design from all angles.

 

We cut back to France and another massed attack on noble property and another audacious rescue by the Pimpernel’s men – should that just be The Pimpernels – high up on the balcony of a gorgeous castle – leading the aristos to safety whilst their leader, dressed as a French fop, leads the hoards away… before making like Fairbanks, shimmying down a long curtain and disguising himself again.

Part Chaney/Part Fairbanks?

These action sequences are well wrought and show a different aspect of Powell’s filmmaking and Pressburger’s writing too; no matter how frivolous the storyline, they prove here that they can be just as entertaining as their peers; the film has a very satisfying scale and a good turn of pace and the humour from Pressburger’s script is handled very well by British actors almost made in Niven’s image, Patrick Macnee, Terence Alexander and Robert Coote.

 

There’s also good chemistry between Margaret Leighton as Marguerite Blakeney and Niven as her husband; she doesn’t know of his double life but there’s a reason for that and the newly arrived Comtesse de Tournai (Arlette Marchal) refuses to speak to her as she, like everyone else, believes she betrayed her class at the earliest opportunity.

 

Well, that, and many other things we will just have to find out as the game between the Pimpernel and Chauvelin is played out right to the bitter end.

A Brian Easdale score also helps to uplift this film and, whilst it is not top-quality Archers it is without doubt as good as many such capers and is fun throughout, especially on 35mm!