The Elusive Pimpernel [The Fighting Pimpernel] *** (1950, David Niven, Margaret Leighton, Cyril Cusack, Jack Hawkins) – Classic Movie Review 5,503

David Niven makes an affable if not inspired Scarlet Pimpernel (aka British aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney) in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s costly, colourful 1950 film The Elusive Pimpernel.

David Niven makes an affable if not inspired Scarlet Pimpernel (aka British aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney) in writer-producer-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s costly, colourful 1950 film The Elusive Pimpernel, a reworking of Leslie Howard’s 1935 classic movie The Scarlet Pimpernel, based on the 1905 novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy.

Co-financed by Samuel Goldwyn and Alexander Korda, it was beset by production problems and it is inferior to the 1935 version. It was planned by an unhappy Powell as a musical and the songs have been dropped. He and Niven were forced to make the film by threats of contract suspension. Goldwyn forced Powell to make many additions and changes but still refused to make his final payment, causing Korda to sue him. Niven’s unhappiness later led to him severing his contract with Goldwyn. Also, Powell disapproved of the casting of Margaret Leighton as Niven’s co-star, playing Marguerite Blakeney.

However, there are compensations. Christopher Challis’s Technicolor cinematography and Hein Heckroth’s set designs look gorgeous, and there are flashes of the regular Powell and Pressburger wit, style and verve. Also, there is some fine star character actor support, especially Cyril Cusack’s wily Chauvelin, Margaret Leighton as Marguerite Blakeney, and Jack Hawkins as the Prince of Wales.

Predictably, Niven is more comfortable and persuasive as the action-hero Pimpernel saving the French nobility from the blood-thirsty mob than as the effete English lord Sir Percy, whereas Howard managed both equally, and so did Marius Goring on British TV in the mid-1950s.

Also in the cast are Edmond Audran, David Hutcheson, Robert Coote, Danielle Godet, Charles Victor, Arlette Marchal, Gérard Néry, Eugene Deckers, John Longden, Arthur Wontner, David Oxley, Raymond Rollett, Phillip Stainton, Robert Griffiths, George de Warfaz, Jane Gill Davies, Richard George, John Fitzgerald, Patrick Macnee, Terence Alexander, and Cherry Cottrell in her only cinema movie as Lady Coke. Robert Griffiths plays Trubshaw, a name Niven regularly insisted on giving to minor characters in his films as a tribute to his old army friend, Michael Trubshawe.

After Goldwyn pulled out, the movie was finally distributed in the United States in July 1953 by Carroll Pictures in black and white only.

The Elusive Pimpernel was filmed at Boreham Wood, Elstree and Shepperton studios, with location work in Bath, Dover, Savernake Forest (Marlborough Downs), and the stables of Carlton House Terrace, St James’s, London. There was also location filming in France in the chateaux of the Loire Valley and on Mont Saint-Michel.

It is also known as The Fighting Pimpernel.

The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel starred Marius Goring as Sir Percy Blakeney/ The Scarlet Pimpernel, and was first screened in Britain in 1955 to 1956 in an 18-episode series beginning on 28 September 1955. It was created by writer Michael Hogan and produced by the Towers of London for Incorporated Television Programmes.

Richard E Grant starred as Sir Percy Blakeney in the 1999/ 2000 two-season, six episode TV series The Scarlet Pimpernel.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,503

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