Pimpernel Smith is a 1941 adventure film, directed by and starring Leslie Howard, which updates The Scarlet Pimpernel story from Revolutionary France to pre-World War II Europe.
The film features an early screen appearance by David Tomlinson.
This movie is notable for helping to inspire Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg to mount a real-life rescue operation in Budapest that, conservatively estimated, saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi concentration camps during the last months of World War II.[1]
Plot
In the days leading up to World War II, a seemingly absent-minded archeology professor, Horatio Smith (Howard), saves people from the Gestapo. During one such daring rescue, he disguises himself as a scarecrow in a field and is inadvertently shot by a German soldier idly engaging in a bit of target practice. Later, his students guess his secret when they read about the wound in a newspaper. They enthusiastically volunteer to assist him.
German General von Graum (Sullivan) is assigned to find out the identity of the latter-day Scarlet Pimpernel and eliminate him. Von Graum forces Ludmilla Koslowski (Morris) to help him by threatening the life of her father, held prisoner. When Smith finds out, he promises her he will free Koslowski.
Smith and his students, masquerading as American journalists, visit the camp in which Koslowski is being held. They overpower their escort, put on their uniforms, and leave with Koslowski and some other inmates. By now, von Graum is sure Smith is the man he is after, so he stops the train transporting the professor and various packing crates out of the country. However, when he has the crates opened, he is disappointed to find only artefacts inside.
Von Graum still has Ludmilla, so Smith comes back for her. The general catches the couple at a border crossing. In return for Ludmilla's freedom, Smith agrees to give himself up. In the end, Smith manages to distract his adversary and escape into the fog, but promises to come back.
Cast
- Leslie Howard as Professor Horatio Smith
- Francis L. Sullivan as General von Graum
- Mary Morris as Ludmilla Koslowski
- Hugh McDermott as David Maxwell
- Raymond Huntley as Marx
- Manning Whiley as Bertie Gregson
- Peter Gawthorne as Sidimir Koslowski
- Allan Jeayes as Dr. Beckendorf
- Dennis Arundell as Hoffman
See also
References
- ^ Linnéa, Sharon, Raoul Wallenberg: The Man Who Stopped Death, Jewish Publication Society of America, copyright 1993.
External links
