Nonureva Really Surprised!

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A_Different_Drummer Leslie Howard was an actor's actor, the highest form of praise, a man whose skill at his craft would allow him to blend into almost any character, any role. While he left behind for fans of the future many fine performances, it is generally thought that one of his best was the original Scarlet Pimpernel in which he had to play what was arguably one of the screen's first "superheros" complete with a secret identity. In the iconic original he manages to effectively portray the mild-mannered fop (more interested in clothing than fighting); the warrior and man of action known as the Pimpernel; and even the romantic counter-part to his wife (who, in a brilliant sub-plot, was also not what she seemed, but for entirely different reasons). It was an astonishing portrayal. Hollywood being what it is (was?) Howard was given a second chance to play the same character in a modern setting, as an underground agent working against the Nazis on their own soil. The script, direction, and acting are all superb. The only negative is that this film TAKEN ON ITS OWN might seem contrived and over-written. Unless - THIS IS THE KEY -- you see the original first. Remember that this was the era before 500 cable channels and streaming video. It is a 'given' that the audience for this film was familiar with the first. So if you you follow their footsteps and see the films in proper order, the sheer bravado and outrage within this script will pop, and you will enjoy a tremendously entertaining film by a master at the top of his craft.In particular, the exchanges between Howard and his nemesis, played by Francis L. Sullivan, and are the stuff of legend.And the scene where Howard, playing a die-hard bachelor, shows a photo of his lifelong love (the statue Aphrodite) to the character played by Mary Morris and then tears it up in front of her ... remains one of the most romantic scenes ever films. A declaration of love with no words spoken.The pity is that being B&W this film will have a smaller and smaller audience in years to come. Pity.

iph-1 Others have given plenty of praise. I was disappointed about a few small details, and will mention three instances from that classroom scene and moments after it. First, I found it hard to believe that some of the students (such as David Maxwell) were much less than middle-aged, and indeed Hugh McDermott was 33 (and 3 months) in July 1941. After World War I there were a lot of older men in universities as they had been called up from school; but I don't think this was true in 1939 before the second lot of trouble with Germany started. Second, did young Americans in 1939 really say things like "a rough house is just my meat" when they meant they enjoyed a bit of a fight? I doubt it. It sounded very antiquated, stilted, out of tone with the rest of the dialogue there. (By the way, McDermott was of course British, and his supposedly American accent here is a bit odd at times too.)Third, I recognize that Leslie Howard had an awful lot to do on this movie; but his attention to detail lapsed in the moment when the professor walks through a college cloister and recites a snatch from the first stanza of Jabberwocky: "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble ...". In "gyre and gimble" he makes both Gs hard but this is correct only in "gimble". A fastidious learned professor would -- and actor of Howard's stature surely should -- know that "gyre" is a perfectly good English word going back centuries, and that, like "gyrate" and "gyroscope", it begins with a soft G (that is, it sounds like "jyre"). There is no plot reason for Prof. Smith to pretend to get it wrong: as I see it, the point of him reciting the lines is that he is a dreamer, rather other-worldly, and fond of such things as this rhyme from a fantasy for children written by an eccentric mathematics don; not that he is not sufficiently erudite to pronounce such a word as this correctly. Indeed, if he were really chiefly a working secret agent, only pretending to be a Cambridge scholar, he would be more likely to make such a mistake; if it were a deliberate error by the professor, it would be counterproductive. Therefore it is an error by the actor-director, not an error (deliberate or otherwise) by the character.

davidh-51 Leslie Howard plays absent minded professor in updated version of the scarlet pimpernel spiriting away enemies of Nazi Germany.Set almost at the outbreak of world war II the film is clearly anti Nazi propaganda with classic quips such as "that is to stop the oppressed Swiss from escaping into free Germany".The Germans are typically portrayed as bungling half wits afraid of their masters with the exception of Francis Sullivan's character Graum who is portrayed as a parody of Herman Goering. I love this film despite its limitations and deficiencies it reminds me of a happier bygone England, it is full of humour,a hint of romance and plenty of adventure. Great.

Howard Schumann Returning to England before the war, Leslie Howard was a towering figure in the British government's anti-Nazi propaganda policy, making patriotic radio broadcasts and movies that lifted the spirits of the British people in the dark days of the war. One such film was Pimpernel Smith in which Howard plays Archeology Professor Horatio Smith who doubles as a British spy, undertaking to help refugees escape from the Gestapo. Based on the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy and modeled after the 1934 film of the same name, Pimpernel Smith is said to have influenced Raoul Wallenberg, known for his heroism in rescuing Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. In the film, Professor Smith takes six students with him on an archaeological dig in Germany, presumably to find out whether or not there was an early Aryan civilization in Germany. Smith tries to convince Gestapo leader General Von Graum (Francis L. Sullivan) that he is just a learned professor, reading from The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll and telling him his theory that William Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford. Imagine that! The Professor's wit and wisdom are no match for the humorless Nazis and they seem to fall for each of the professor's tricks. Unfortunately, the Nazis are depicted not as mass murderers but only as bumbling clowns who speak English as well as Winston Churchill. When Smith is wounded, the students catch on to what he is up to and agree to help him in his attempts to secure the release of pianist Sidimir Koslowski (Peter Gawthorne). In his clandestine cat and mouse game, he meets Koslowski's daughter Ludmilla (Mary Morris) who is working for the Nazis in order to save her father and the two form a bond. Howard's role as Professor Smith is one of his most acclaimed in a career that included roles as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind and Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel. He had a great sense of style and screen presence and his death in 1943 on what was most likely an intelligence gathering mission for the British left the film industry bereft of one of its brightest stars.