This is the drama which Don't Lose Your Head (1967) spoofs. For 1934 it's watchable once you get into the repressed style (except the last third. And I have to point out that the ignorant romance between Percy and Marguerite is UNLIKELY).
The myth/legend of the Scarlet Pimpernel is mostly FICTION, written as recently as 1905 (by Hungarian Baroness Orczy), probably as warning over the coming Russian revolution. True, the French Revolution of 1792 really did take place at the guillotines of France, which executed some 25-50 people a day, including women and children, while the rest of the population sat around, knitting and cheering. `Damnable, useless cruelty' is a phrase uttered by one the English noblemen to the Prince of Wales (Nigel Bruce) near the beginning of the movie. However, in real life there was NO Scarlet Pimpernel; no organised rescue service existed for the thousands who were systematically executed simply for being born on the newly wrong side of society.
Occasionally countries will undergo such bloody paroxysms, where some new leader decides that society has to be restructured from scratch. Our job is to realize that leaders who take it upon themselves to decide `the future happiness of the human race' (Citizen Robespierre's self-justification in this movie) are NEVER up to the task.
It takes most of the movie to understand the intertwined relationships between Marguerite St Juste (Merle Oberon), her brother Armand (Walter Rilla), her English nobleman husband Percy Blakeney aka the Pimpernel (Leslie Howard), and Citizen Chauvelin of the French Secret Police (Raymond Massey). Marguerite was a famous French actress before she married the Englishman with whom she fell in love in France. After their wedding, she moved to Percy's English manor to live essentially a lonely life as a noblewoman without relatives in England. So she craves the company of her brother who regularly visits them, and who has befriended Percy too. Unbeknownst to Marguerite, not only is her husband now the secretive rescuer, but her brother is in the Pimpernel's band as well. But ever since The Terrors began, no-one in France is safe. Marguerite knows full well from first-hand experience that the executions have long since broken out of any bounds of justice, and all it takes for someone to be executed as a `traitor' is to be denounced. Can you imagine the private score-settling accusations that would surely flourish in an atmosphere like that?
It turns out that Marguerite's hands ARE dirty: it was she who first denounced the Marquis Sanciere to Citizen Chauvelin, as payback for what the Marquis did to her. We have to wait another frustrating 30mins to find out that the Marquis, interfering in his son's romance with Marguerite the actress, had her arrested and sent to a particularly brutal prison. But the brutal father was the very first victim of The Terrors when, due to the Revolution, all the prisoners were released, and Marguerite, as a debriefed prisoner, told her story to the ambitious Chauvelin, who was `a friend' (read slimy suitor) to her then. The Terrors did the rest: looking to make a career for himself in the vicious Revolution which of course perfectly suited his personality, Chauvelin simply inserted her name onto the denouncement document he submitted to the new government. This was probably responsible for Chauvelin's promotion to the head of the French Secret Police. And of course, as per Terrors ideology, once the Marquis Sanciere was judged a traitor, then by association so were his wife and son, the very son who asked for Marguerite's hand. Oh YES, it's a slippery slope once secrecy and bloody revenge rule the day. The truth is not only the first casualty; it doesn't even exist anymore. The world goes mad and your friends become your enemies.
It is Armand, Marguerite's brother, who finally uncovers that only after Percy heard his own wife admit to him that it was she who `sent' the Sancieres to their deaths that he decided to rescue aristocrats: he became The Scarlet Pimpernel to ATONE for his wife's guilt! Of course he couldn't do it all by himself, so he collected a group of like-minded English aristocrats, who all had to resort to guerrilla tactics and disguises. `We must mask our identities', argues Percy. `We must suffer the humiliation of being taken for a fool, fop; coward. Do you think I like sitting there in the night while one head falls after another, people I know and love, innocent people, kindly people, herded like sheep, butchered like cattle, by men who make high-sounding principles in excuse for the most bestial cruelty, Robespierre's Liberty, his Equality and his Fraternity....'.
To the movie's credit, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) is emotionally affecting...up to this point. However there is too much subterfuge in the final third (the last act). Suddenly Chauvelin figures out who the Pimpernel is, as does Percy's wife (at least her discovery is exciting). Chauvelin, on the other hand, begins to set an endgame trap for the Pimpernel by questioning people (badly). The scenes where Raymond Massey, the ham, chokes and interrogates citizens AND THEY JUST TELL HIM everything he wants to know, without tricks or holding ANYTHING back, are just pathetic. This is very bad filmmaking/ direction indeed, not to mention some of the worst acting I've ever seen. NOTHING shows in their face or behaviour. Even Marguerite faints for no good reason. In hindsight you can probably imagine what she might have been thinking, but she certainly didn't ACT any of it! People make flip-flopping decisions with NIL justification beyond face value. Everyone in those last scenes sucks, including Leslie Howard.
And the ending! I hated it. Chauvelin has an utterly uncertain future by the ending, and even the very last frame of the movie is comprised of an embarrassing attempt at art. At least the spoof version (Don't Lose Your Head (1967)) gives us a REAL ENDING! Watch that to find out what's supposed to happen!
The myth/legend of the Scarlet Pimpernel is mostly FICTION, written as recently as 1905 (by Hungarian Baroness Orczy), probably as warning over the coming Russian revolution. True, the French Revolution of 1792 really did take place at the guillotines of France, which executed some 25-50 people a day, including women and children, while the rest of the population sat around, knitting and cheering. `Damnable, useless cruelty' is a phrase uttered by one the English noblemen to the Prince of Wales (Nigel Bruce) near the beginning of the movie. However, in real life there was NO Scarlet Pimpernel; no organised rescue service existed for the thousands who were systematically executed simply for being born on the newly wrong side of society.
Occasionally countries will undergo such bloody paroxysms, where some new leader decides that society has to be restructured from scratch. Our job is to realize that leaders who take it upon themselves to decide `the future happiness of the human race' (Citizen Robespierre's self-justification in this movie) are NEVER up to the task.
It takes most of the movie to understand the intertwined relationships between Marguerite St Juste (Merle Oberon), her brother Armand (Walter Rilla), her English nobleman husband Percy Blakeney aka the Pimpernel (Leslie Howard), and Citizen Chauvelin of the French Secret Police (Raymond Massey). Marguerite was a famous French actress before she married the Englishman with whom she fell in love in France. After their wedding, she moved to Percy's English manor to live essentially a lonely life as a noblewoman without relatives in England. So she craves the company of her brother who regularly visits them, and who has befriended Percy too. Unbeknownst to Marguerite, not only is her husband now the secretive rescuer, but her brother is in the Pimpernel's band as well. But ever since The Terrors began, no-one in France is safe. Marguerite knows full well from first-hand experience that the executions have long since broken out of any bounds of justice, and all it takes for someone to be executed as a `traitor' is to be denounced. Can you imagine the private score-settling accusations that would surely flourish in an atmosphere like that?
It turns out that Marguerite's hands ARE dirty: it was she who first denounced the Marquis Sanciere to Citizen Chauvelin, as payback for what the Marquis did to her. We have to wait another frustrating 30mins to find out that the Marquis, interfering in his son's romance with Marguerite the actress, had her arrested and sent to a particularly brutal prison. But the brutal father was the very first victim of The Terrors when, due to the Revolution, all the prisoners were released, and Marguerite, as a debriefed prisoner, told her story to the ambitious Chauvelin, who was `a friend' (read slimy suitor) to her then. The Terrors did the rest: looking to make a career for himself in the vicious Revolution which of course perfectly suited his personality, Chauvelin simply inserted her name onto the denouncement document he submitted to the new government. This was probably responsible for Chauvelin's promotion to the head of the French Secret Police. And of course, as per Terrors ideology, once the Marquis Sanciere was judged a traitor, then by association so were his wife and son, the very son who asked for Marguerite's hand. Oh YES, it's a slippery slope once secrecy and bloody revenge rule the day. The truth is not only the first casualty; it doesn't even exist anymore. The world goes mad and your friends become your enemies.
It is Armand, Marguerite's brother, who finally uncovers that only after Percy heard his own wife admit to him that it was she who `sent' the Sancieres to their deaths that he decided to rescue aristocrats: he became The Scarlet Pimpernel to ATONE for his wife's guilt! Of course he couldn't do it all by himself, so he collected a group of like-minded English aristocrats, who all had to resort to guerrilla tactics and disguises. `We must mask our identities', argues Percy. `We must suffer the humiliation of being taken for a fool, fop; coward. Do you think I like sitting there in the night while one head falls after another, people I know and love, innocent people, kindly people, herded like sheep, butchered like cattle, by men who make high-sounding principles in excuse for the most bestial cruelty, Robespierre's Liberty, his Equality and his Fraternity....'.
To the movie's credit, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) is emotionally affecting...up to this point. However there is too much subterfuge in the final third (the last act). Suddenly Chauvelin figures out who the Pimpernel is, as does Percy's wife (at least her discovery is exciting). Chauvelin, on the other hand, begins to set an endgame trap for the Pimpernel by questioning people (badly). The scenes where Raymond Massey, the ham, chokes and interrogates citizens AND THEY JUST TELL HIM everything he wants to know, without tricks or holding ANYTHING back, are just pathetic. This is very bad filmmaking/ direction indeed, not to mention some of the worst acting I've ever seen. NOTHING shows in their face or behaviour. Even Marguerite faints for no good reason. In hindsight you can probably imagine what she might have been thinking, but she certainly didn't ACT any of it! People make flip-flopping decisions with NIL justification beyond face value. Everyone in those last scenes sucks, including Leslie Howard.
And the ending! I hated it. Chauvelin has an utterly uncertain future by the ending, and even the very last frame of the movie is comprised of an embarrassing attempt at art. At least the spoof version (Don't Lose Your Head (1967)) gives us a REAL ENDING! Watch that to find out what's supposed to happen!