Review: ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ is One of the Finest Novel Adaptations, From Page to Screen

I beg the Criterion Collection on bended knee to please, please restore “The Scarlet Pimpernel” to its original lustrous visual purity. This 1934 film of the Baroness Orczy novel is one of the finest adaptations from page to screen.The screenplay actualizes wit and charm that are only implied in the novel. I assert without fear of contradiction that the film is far superior to the novel, which is written in the style of a 12-year-old gripped by a sugar mania.

Every character is cast to perfection and none is more perfect than Leslie Howard in the title role. Howard, who is most remembered as Ashley Wilkes in “Gone with the Wind,” is in his element as the cunning, audacious hero who masks his identity in the guise of a foppish lordling, rakishly peering through his quizzing glass and drawling witty inanities. The role calls for no deep psychological survey of The Pimpernel’s (Lord Blakeney’s) character, but it does call for style by the bucketloads, which Howard is admirably positioned to provide.

Lord Blakeney’s wife and love is played by the exquisite Merle Oberon, whose acting chops and charm are most impressive. Very few actors could deliver lines like, “What is important is that your leader and comrade, the Scarlet Pimpernel. . .my husband. . . Percy Blakeney. . .is in deadly peril,” and make the audience smile with delight, rather than laugh with derision. Oberon turns the twit at the heart of Baroness Orczy’s novel into a gorgeous, yet believable, heroine. And her chemistry with Howard throbs with sexuality underneath the powdered wigs and lace jabots. This on-screen attraction was surely aided by the affair they were conducting off-screen.

The third member of the triangle of intrigue is Citoyen Chauvelin played with reptilian menace by Raymond Massey. Chauvelin, a spy in service of the French Republic, is like Ahab, and The Scarlet Pimpernel his white whale. Chauvelin must discover the identity of “that demmed elusive Pimpernel” who is snatching aristocrats from the very foot of the guillotine and spiriting them to the safety of England or face the guillotine himself.

The screenwriters, including playwright Robert Sherwood, raise the IQ of the story by dozens of points above the bumptious writing of the novel. The verbal by-play between Sir Percy and everyone else displays the wit of real intelligence.

An elegant bow to Nigel Bruce: Bruce, best known as Watson to Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes, plays the rotund, vacuous Prince of Wales, the kind of part at which he was a specialist.

If you love classic movies about the French Revolution with handsome heroes, pair “The Scarlet Pimpernel” with “A Tale of Two Cities” (1935) starring Ronald Colman and Basil Rathbone.