The Scarlet Pimpernel Movie Review

The Scarlet Pimpernel must have been Margaret Truman's favorite film while her father Harry was President; she arranged for it to be screened no less than 16 times, according to Guinness’ Movie Facts and Feats. This picture has absolutely everything. Leslie Howard is exactly what a stylish dandy AND a shrewd renegade should be. Even with all the swashbuckling, Howard as Sir Percival Blakeney comes up with some astonishingly subtle moments, like when he must conceal that he's madly in love with his wife (gorgeous Merle Oberon), whom he believes to be a traitor. Raymond Massey is rather a one-note Chauvelin, though. If you want to see how the part can be played to perfection, see the 1982 version with Ian McKellen in which lust, jealousy, rage, and revenge are brilliantly conveyed with the simplest of gestures and with slight, vivid shifts of expression. The Scarlet Pimpernel consolidated the enormous impact producer Alexander Korda had made on American audiences with 1933's The Private Life of Henry VIII, starring the Oscar-winning Charles Laughton. In many ways, this is a richer, more complex yarn, but the Motion Picture Academy members, still reeling from the previous year, only nominated domestic productions in 1934.

1934 95m/B GB Leslie Howard, Joan Gardner, Merle Oberon, Raymond Massey, Anthony Bushell, Nigel Bruce, Bramwell Fletcher, Walter Rilla, O.B. Clarence, Ernest Milton, Edmund Breon, Melville Cooper, Gibb McLaughlin, Morland Graham, Allan Jeayes; D: Harold Young; W: Robert Sherwood, Arthur Wimperis, Lajos Biro; C: Harold Rosson. VHS, DVD