Pimpernel Smith (1941)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- It is mid-1939 and both Germany and England are preparing for an inevitable conflict. Professor Horatio Smith, an effete academic, asks his students to come with him to the continent to engage in an archaeological dig. When his students discover that the professor is the man responsible for smuggling a number of enemies of the Nazi state out of Germany, they enthusiastically join him in his fight. But things are complicated when one of his students brings a mysterious woman into their circle; a woman who may be secretly working for the Gestapo.
- Actors:
- Allan Jeayes, Peter Gawthorne, Ernest Butcher, Ben Williams, Leslie Howard, Arthur Hambling, Joan Kemp-Welch, Hugh McDermott, Manning Whiley, Philip Friend, Basil Appleby, Laurence Kitchin, David Tomlinson, Mary Brown, Aubrey Mallalieu, W. Phillips, Ilse Bard, Ernest Verne, George Street, Raymond Huntley
- Directors:
- Leslie Howard
- Voiced By:
- Adolf Hitler
- Writers:
- Anatole de Grunwald, A.G. Macdonell
- Genres:
- Action & Adventure, Classics, Drama, Thrillers
- Collections:
- 10 Films to Watch if You Like: Operation Mincemeat, A Brief History of Archaeology on Screen: Part 1, Drama Films & TV, Films to Watch If You Like..., Top 10 British War Films (1939-45), Top Films, WWII Films: The Battle of Britain & In the Air
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Reviews (1) of Pimpernel Smith
War Propaganda. - Pimpernel Smith review by Steve
Lengthy but exciting update of Leslie Howard's classic The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) to prewar Germany. He plays Horatio Smith, who anonymously rescues scientists and intellectuals from concentration camps while posing as a dusty professor of archeology. The star's alter-ego actually owes quite a bit to his performance as Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (1938).
The film establishes how the Nazis would portrayed during the war years: bureaucratic, uncultured, humourless and sadistic. And stupid. Of course, the British might not be militaristic, but they have wit and fair play on their side. At times it feels like the Brits plan to triumph through charming self deprecation.
It is surprisingly elitist. Smith's aim isn't actually to defend democracy, but save the great men who create history. Yes, the ubermensch. But the film does work as propaganda. Smith is the personification of presumed British values and culture and he continually bests the blundering Gestapo, while dropping quotes from Shakespeare and Rupert Brooke.
It is a patriotic thriller. Howard gives a fine performance, and becomes a mythic figure of justice towards the end of the film, cloaked in shadows, firing off rounds of sweet sounding rhetoric. It was a morale booster made at a time when the war wasn't going well. And it mysteriously captures an aura of anxiety, and of jeopardy.