The Scarlet Pimpernel

British film director Clive Donner’s spectacular 1982 adaptation of Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel is considered by many to be by far the definitive version. I can’t argue with that. It is the most sumptuously produced of the three classic Donner directed films, the other two being Oliver Twist (1982) and A Christmas Carol (1984). While Carol is the most popular film of the three (partially of being a holiday movie, not to mention the second greatest Christmas story outside of the birth of Jesus), Pimpernel is arguably the superior of all three films. It is the also the longest, running three hours while the other two films only ran two. It was first broadcast in November of 1982 on CBS, but, sadly, I didn’t catch it until several years later.

While the basic plots of the two Dickens films are fairly well-known, I may have to recap the story of Pimpernel. The Scarlet Pimpernel novels were written by Baroness Orczy,an Austrian noblewoman around the turn of the previous century. The first novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel, was not critically a success, but proved was wildly popular. It was first adapted into a play. With the success of her first novel, Orczy wrote an entire series of Pimpernel sequels. They followed the adventures of Sir Percival Blakeney, an English baronet who rescues condemned nobles from the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Blakeney poses as a foppish, empty-headed fashion-obsessed dandy whom no one even vaguely suspects is the mastermind behind the rescues.


His adversary is the ruthlessly power-seeking Armand Chauvelin, chief agent of Robespierre’s National Security, who is in charge of the arrest and execution of France’s former ruling class. In the beginning, not even Percy’s wife, the beautiful actress Marguerite, suspects his true identity. The story involves Chauvelin blackmailing Marguerite into spying for him to learn the Scarlet Pimpernel’s identity. In doing so, she learns that her husband is man Chauvelin seeks, and that she has inadvertently betrayed him. Marguerite travels to France in an effort to save Percy, but ends up captured by Chauvelin. The story climaxes on the cliffs of the French coast, where Percy evades capture by posing as a despised Jew. The movie actually combines this story with one of the later novels, Eldorado, which centers around Percy’s rescue of the poor, wretched dauphin (the French Crown Prince), Louis XVII. The plot of Eldorado involves an intriguing moral setup, as it involves the Baron DeBatz, an Austrian nobleman who seeks to rescue the boy for purely political (which in this case translates into selfish) reasons, which contrasts with Sir Percy, who rescues the dauphin for reasons that are entirely altruistic.


In addition to intertwining the two tales, the movie makes a few alterations, a minor one being the change of Chauvelin’s first name from Armand to Paul. This is perhaps to avoid confusion with Marguerite’ s brother, who’s name is also Armand. Another, and far more influential change from the books is the love triangle between Percy, Marguerite, and Chauvelin. In the book, Percy and Marguerite are already married when the story opens. In the movie, Marguerite is a French actress and a Revolutionary, and partial love-interest to Chauvelin. Percy rescues her brother (from some thugs sent to punish him from wooing an aristocrat’s daughter), and eventually wins her over. As in the book, Marguerite is entirely unaware of Percy’s secret identity.

As in the book she is blackmailed into spying for Chauvelin, and too late discovers who the Pimpernel is. Unlike either book however, the movie supplies a twist ending worthy of any of the ones written by Orczy. I won’t spoil it, but there occurs near the end a scene where it looks like Percy could not possibly have survived. This is followed by the climactic sword battle between Percy and Chauvelin. The film is crammed with perils and hair-breadth escapes, some invented for the film, others lifted directly from the books.


By today’s standards, Pimpernel doesn’t quite meet the standards of prevailing political correctness. While most critics I’ve read recognize the film’s merit, some few have blasted the movie taking the side of formerly powerful and privileged aristos. I remember one who charged the film with cheering the nobles and booing the masses. Actually, that’s not accurate. The villains in Pimpernel are hardly “the masses” but the Revolutionary leaders who have become drunk on their own power. Tragic as it was, many of the victims of the Reign of Terror truly were innocents. Maximillian Robspeirre was one of the historical personas who promoted the false idea that a new era of freedom and prosperity would be ushered in once “authority” was done away with. The Communist Revolutionaries of over a century later proclaimed the same thing. Each time, tyranny merely reasserted itself in a new form. Louis XVI was actually a man who saw and favored the need for change, but who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. His son Louis Capet XVII was merely a victim; the real dauphin died of abuse and neglect in the Temple Prison. While there remained some speculation that the boy actually might have been rescued (giving rise to rumors of an actual Sir Percy or equivalent thereof), DNA evidence has now confirmed the contrary. Ditto with the Tsarevich Alexis and one of his sisters, both child-victims of Russia’s Communist revolution, whose bodies were long unaccounted for. The idea that there are no true innocents among the tribe one hates (“show me one artisto who is innocent and you can spit in my face!”)has always been part of the human condition, and, unfortunately still persists among us still.
It is true, of course, that Orczy slanted her novels, and her position as a member of the aristocracy had everything to do with this. A more thorough exploration of the insidious nature of evil is to be found in Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, which shows monstrous acts committed by both aristocrats and obsessed revolutionaries, not to mention what is perhaps the most heroic sacrifice found in literature.


Orczy described her hero as very tall, blond and blue eyed. Anthony Andrews, who plays Sir Percy, is Hazel-eyed and doesn’t fit that description exactly. Still, it’s hard to imagine a better actor for the role. Andrews starred in a similarly heroic role earlier the same year as the title role in Ivanhoe. It seems that the last few times I’ve seen him though, it’s been as villains such as the evil Murdstone in the most recent TV version of David Copperfield, which shows his versitality.


Margarite is played by actress Jane Seymour. Seymour played numerous roles around the same time, and I’d read she’d even been slated to play Queen Marie Antoinette, in a dramatization the Revolution, with her own child as the French dauphin (“because he’s the spitting image of Louis VII”)though whether this materialized or not, I do not know. UPDATE: this movie is real; it’s called simply The French Revolution (1989). Ian McKellan, who plays Chauvelin, is an incredibly versatile actor, who has played Tsar Nicholas in HBO’s version of Rasputin (starring Allen Rickman as the mad monk), Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, Iorek Byrnison (the voice), the noble polar bear king in The Golden Compass, among a vast many others. McKellen is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and has starred in villainous roles as Richard the Third and Macbeth. The part he plays in Pimpernel also bears some resemblance to these Shakespearean villains, a ruthless power-seeker willing to eliminate anyone who he identifies as a rival or obstacle to his goals. McKellen is excellent in his portrayal of power-seeking disguised as social concern.

The dauphin Louis-Charles Capet is played by the “Oliver Twist” boy himself, Richard Charles, and Eleanor David, who played Oliver’s aunt in that same production, plays Louise Longe, Armand St. Just’s love interest.

NOTE: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I beleive the following observation is true. In none of the Pimpernel novels authored by Orczy (at least, the ones I've read), does Sir Percy ever utter his famous catch-prhase "Sink me!" (a corruption of "Think me!"). There was one Pimpernel story where the line "Sink me!" did occur, but it was a Pimernel pastiche written after the 1982 movie! Similar to the known fact that Sherlock Holmes never says, "Elementary, my dear Watson!" in any of the original Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle.


LINKS:






http://www.erasofelegance.com/entertainment/movies/scarlet/scarlet.html

http://pargoletta.livejournal.com/75310.html

http://www.blakeneymanor.com/index1.html