The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)

When it comes to revolutions it's possible to go too far, and they have gone it. They're chopping off head after head while the crowd cheers. It's the aftermath of the French revolution, the 1780s, and the Reign of Terror prevails, perhaps another case of the cure being as bad as the disease. Most social movements follow a similar path only in revolutions the results are more dramatic. Fidel Castro worked his way down to government mailmen. I'm going to call this "revolutionary inertia." Inertia means an object continues its motion until acted upon by an opposite force. The Salem witch trials resulted in more than twenty hangings and only stopped when he girls started accusing community leaders. That's all for now, and thank you for your kind attention.The citizens have deposed the King and taken over France and the first thing they do is start beheading whatever aristocrats they can find reason to. Everybody's getting it in the neck, and the guillotine is in the public square, the executions surrounded by screaming mobs of the newly empowered and bloodthirsty. Intolerable.So a wealthy Englishman, Anthony Andrews, while posing as an effete and shallow fop, periodically disguises himself, visits Paris, and with the help of some comrades smuggles handfuls of aristos out of the country. The Committee on Revolutionary Protocol or whatever it's called is furious with this mysterious "Scarlet Pimpernel" who seems intent on helping suspects escape the bloodbath. We don't actually see any heads tumbling into baskets, thank God. There is a good deal of action and suspense that underlines the intrigues we see developing in the story -- clattering tumbrils, galloping horses, an occasional knife duel.Especially annoyed is Ian McKellen as the Minister of Executions or whatever he's called. And he SHOULD be. Andrews, still in his guise of a peacock, has managed to swipe McKellar's beloved Jane Seymour. Seymour, of course, knows nothing of Andrews' secret persona and neither does anyone outside of Andrews' small circle of conspirators.Jane Seymour is delicious in her 18th-century finery, despite a fright wig of such proportions that it carries its own weather system. Andrews is all right with both identities except that NOBODY in his right mind could endure the presence of Sir Percy Blakeney, Andrews' fop identity, for more than one or two awkward moments. Really, the guy could clear a room without using a gun. "They seek him here, they seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven? Is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel," is some doggerel he improvises in the presence of the revolution's head honchos, much to their annoyance. Sir Percy struts around in his meticulous dress carrying a tiny magnifying glass through which he examines persons of a lesser breed, his head tilted back, his nostrils quivering.Best performance is by Ian McKellen who is truly in love with Jane Seymour and is emotionally damaged by seeing her drift away into the arms of that English snob. But he does an extraordinary job of projecting his anguish, torn between his love for Madame Seymour and his allegiance to Madame Guillotine. You know something -- McKellen is a youngish man here, not the wrinkled and wretched fairy of "Gods and Monsters." In fact he's handsome and rather rugged. He resembles Leonard Nimoy so much that there were times I thought it WAS Leonard Nimoy. Is it possible that McKellen and Nimoy are one and the same person? No? Has anyone ever seen the two of them together in the same room? I thought not.

Finally available on DVD is this excellent made-for-TV version of the great classic romance by Baroness Orczy. It is arguably the definitive telling of the tale, (superior even to the better known 1935 version with Leslie Howard) with its grand sets and sharply, intimate moments. Beautiful production design and great costuming convincingly pull the viewer into post-revolutionary France, there to be captivated by a young and beautiful Jane Seymour and handsome Anthony Andrews, perfectly cast as lovers held apart by a mysterious secret: Andrews' double life as the daring Scarlet Pimpernel! A memorable heroic fantasy and classic romance.

Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymoure have such chemistry during this movie! It's my #1 favorite movie of all time! I could watch it all day w/o getting sick of it! The way the characters interact and lives intertwine - it's just fabulous! The first time I saw this movie was in 10th grade History and I begged my teacher to let me take it home and make a copy! I have had it ever since and I watch it at least twice a month. My husband doesn't understand why I love it, but I suppose I am just a hopeless romantic always looking for a good hero!!! The Scarlet Pimpernel is full of action, comedy, irony - it's just an overall perfect film!

I have never read Baroness Orczy's original novels (are they still in print?), but the story of "The Scarlet Pimpernel" is familiar enough to me from various film and television versions. During the French Revolution an Englishman calling himself the "Scarlet Pimpernel" carries out a series of daring raids in order to rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine. The Pimpernel is in fact Sir Percy Blakeney, an upper-class gentleman, who in order to allay suspicion assumes the identity of a brainless fop, interested only in drinking, gambling and his extensive wardrobe. (A "scarlet pimpernel" is a common European flower; according to this version of the story it features on Sir Percy's coat of arms, which should have given the French authorities a clue as to who was involved).To add a further touch of drama, Sir Percy is married to Marguerite, a beautiful French actress, who is desired by the villain of the story, the revolutionary Chauvelin. She is unaware that her husband is the Pimpernel and, to add further complications, he suspects that she may still have some sympathies with the revolutionaries. Although Marguerite is a fictional character, she is described as a cousin of Louis de Saint-Just, who was a real-life revolutionary leader.This is not the only point at which fact and fiction become mixed. Much of the plot concerns an attempt to rescue the young Dauphin (regarded by French royalists as the de jure King Louis XVII) from prison and take him to England. In reality, of course, the Dauphin died in prison in 1795; had he been freed he would eventually have become de facto King after the fall of Napoleon. The Bourbon restoration of 1814 might well have been more successful had it involved a young man of 29 rather than the elderly childless widower Louis XVIII and the ferociously reactionary Charles X. The scriptwriters seem to have realised at the last minute that their plot involved a major rewriting of French and European history, because the Dauphin suddenly vanishes from the story after going off with a mysterious Austrian nobleman.This version is a British TV movie from the early eighties, done in the usual period drama style. The Pimpernel is played by Anthony Andrews, who is surprisingly convincing as a dashing action hero, although he rather overdoes Sir Percy's affected foppishness, which is so far over the top that it would not have fooled anyone. I say "surprisingly convincing" because at that time Andrews would have been best known to British audiences for his role as the drunken, effeminate Sebastian Flyte in the television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited". Sebastian is another upper-class fop, although in his case the foppishness is quite genuine, not affected. Andrews may have taken on the role of the Pimpernel as a deliberate change of image.The lovely Jane Seymour as Marguerite makes a charming heroine, although I thought that the best performance came from Ian McKellen as Chauvelin. The film does not really explore the politics of the Revolution in any depth and simply takes the line that the Pimpernel and his friends are goodies and the revolutionaries baddies. Nevertheless, McKellen resists the temptation to play Chauvelin as a straightforward villain, motivated by either bloodlust or self-interest. Rather, he makes him an example of an even more dangerous type of individual, the toxic idealist. One of the great tragedies of the French Revolution was that it re-introduced into European thought the damnable idea that a perfect world was attainable and that the best way of attaining it was to kill a few people- and if that doesn't work, try killing a lot of people. (I say "re-introduced" because something similar had existed in the days of witch-hunts and of the burning of heretics, but the Enlightenment had made this sort of thinking temporarily unfashionable). Chauvelin believes in all sincerity that the Revolution will lead to a better world in the future, and that any action, even the killing of innocent people, is therefore justified if it will advance the revolutionary cause.The film's main problem is that at nearly 2½ hours it is too long, and contains too little action in what is ostensibly an action-adventure, apart from one reasonably good swordfight between Chauvelin and the Pimpernel. Most of their duels, in fact, are verbal rather than physical; Sir Percy takes any opportunity he can to insult Chauvelin, particularly on his lack of sartorial elegance. The aim of the film-makers was presumably to make something in the swashbuckling style of an Errol Flynn or Stewart Granger film, but "The Scarlet Pimpernel" lacks the dash, excitement and fast-paced action of the classic swashbucklers. 6/10