Pimpernel Smith

Leslie Howard directs and stars in this update of the classic French-Revolution-set adventure novel The Scarlet Pimpernel, which moves the action to World War II Europe. Howard was a Hollywood star when he returned home to England to support the British war effort. His 1941 film is a mix of patriotic paean, lighthearted swashbuckler, and spy thriller. Howard had starred as the original Scarlet Pimpernel in a 1934 British film and he has fun with this variation on the character, playing Horatio Smith, who uses his cover as a British Professor of Archeology to travel to Germany. This is the original Indiana Jones, an archeologist as adventurer hero, who adopts the role of absent-minded genius with his students to complete his double life. While the Nazis think Smith is unearthing the Aryan history of Germany, he is secretly rescuing artists and scientists held in Nazi concentration camps. When his students spot a wound from his latest mission, they realize that the man they considered a fop is actually a courageous and daring hero and they join his cause. Francis L. Sullivan costars as the corpulent, humorless Nazi officer assigned to capture Smith. Although somewhat slow moving, with restrained direction that favors understatement and dry humor, the film does acknowledges the German concentration camps and brutality of life under Nazi rule for dissidents (but never acknowledges the Jewish persecution). Bowing on Blu-ray, this is a strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker)