I came to this movie after recently watching and enjoying Leslie Howard's performance in the 1934 British costume drama "The Scarlet Pimpernel" and it was a great idea of Howard's to update that film and cast himself as a latter-day Pimpernel combatting the contemporary Terror of the Nazi Party. Churchill, for one was a big fan, no doubt due to its strong anti-Nazi message and I do get its significance as propaganda to inspire the war effort, but I have to say, judged as a movie on its own merits, I found it dull, clichéd and sometimes embarrassingly lame.
Howard is Professor Smith, a donnish archaeologist, who, at least where women are concerned, prefers stone statues to living flesh. But secretly he's working undercover on his own initiative, smuggling Nazi targets and other refugees to escape Germany to the Allied side. Like his earlier Sir Percy Blakeney during the French Revolution, Smith hides his actions under the pretence of being the original absent-minded professor.
For his latest mission to free a Polish defector, he is inveigled into using his young students who twig his true I. D. and demand he let them help him. His plans are complicated further when he encounters his target's pretty young daughter who is actually being pressurised by the Gestapo into giving him up, but given that this is a wartime movie supportive of the Allies, there's never much doubt about what the eventual outcome will be.
Like I said, I totally understand the underlying spirit and purpose of the film and admire Howard, who was soon to tragically die in a plane crash on a wartime mission, for crossing back over from Hollywood to support his country in its time of greatest need.
But, oh my word, what a slow, lame, undramatic movie this is! The Nazis are portrayed as blundering buffoons, outwitted at every turn by the not particularly elusive Pimpernel. Francis L Sullivan is totally miscast as the pompous, incompetent Nazi officer leading the hunt for Smith, but the acting by pretty much all the principals, Howard included, is hewn from pretty much the same tree, the dialogue throughout Is cringeworthy and the action pedestrian and contrived. You can almost see the actors reading their lines and directions from off-camera as the film, like a grounded aircraft, just refuses to fly.
Very successful with the British public at the time, no doubt boosted by Churchill's endorsement, I really wanted to appreciate and enjoy this film on its own merits, but rather like Professor Smith himself, both proved extremely elusive throughout.
Howard is Professor Smith, a donnish archaeologist, who, at least where women are concerned, prefers stone statues to living flesh. But secretly he's working undercover on his own initiative, smuggling Nazi targets and other refugees to escape Germany to the Allied side. Like his earlier Sir Percy Blakeney during the French Revolution, Smith hides his actions under the pretence of being the original absent-minded professor.
For his latest mission to free a Polish defector, he is inveigled into using his young students who twig his true I. D. and demand he let them help him. His plans are complicated further when he encounters his target's pretty young daughter who is actually being pressurised by the Gestapo into giving him up, but given that this is a wartime movie supportive of the Allies, there's never much doubt about what the eventual outcome will be.
Like I said, I totally understand the underlying spirit and purpose of the film and admire Howard, who was soon to tragically die in a plane crash on a wartime mission, for crossing back over from Hollywood to support his country in its time of greatest need.
But, oh my word, what a slow, lame, undramatic movie this is! The Nazis are portrayed as blundering buffoons, outwitted at every turn by the not particularly elusive Pimpernel. Francis L Sullivan is totally miscast as the pompous, incompetent Nazi officer leading the hunt for Smith, but the acting by pretty much all the principals, Howard included, is hewn from pretty much the same tree, the dialogue throughout Is cringeworthy and the action pedestrian and contrived. You can almost see the actors reading their lines and directions from off-camera as the film, like a grounded aircraft, just refuses to fly.
Very successful with the British public at the time, no doubt boosted by Churchill's endorsement, I really wanted to appreciate and enjoy this film on its own merits, but rather like Professor Smith himself, both proved extremely elusive throughout.