"Pimpernel" Smith
| "Pimpernel" Smith | |
|---|---|
Original theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Leslie Howard |
| Produced by |
Leslie Howard Harold Huth (associate) |
| Written by | A.G. Macdonell |
| Screenplay by |
Anatole de Grunwald Ian Dalrymple (uncredited) |
| Story by | A.G. Macdonell Wolfgang Wilhelm |
| Based on |
"Pimpernel" Smith (novel) by Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
| Starring |
Leslie Howard Francis L. Sullivan Mary Morris |
| Music by | John Greenwood |
| Cinematography | Mutz Greenbaum |
| Edited by |
Sidney Cole Douglas Myers |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Anglo-American Film Corporation (UK) United Artists (US) |
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Release date
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Running time
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120 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
"Pimpernel" Smith (novel)
by A.G. Macdonell
"Pimpernel" Smith (released in the United States as Mister V) is a 1941 British anti-Nazi thriller, produced and directed by its star Leslie Howard, which updates his role in the 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel from Revolutionary France to pre-Second World War Europe. The British Film Yearbook for 1945 described his work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda".
The film helped to inspire Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg to mount his real-life rescue operation in Budapest that saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi concentration camps during the last months of the Second World War.
Eccentric Cambridge archaeologist Horatio Smith (Leslie Howard) takes a group of British and American archaeology students to pre-war Nazi Germany to help in his excavations. His research is supported by the Nazis, since he professes to be looking for evidence of the Aryan origins of German civilisation.
However, he has a secret agenda: to free inmates of the concentration camps. During one such daring rescue, he hides disguised as a scarecrow in a field and is inadvertently shot by a German soldier idly engaging in a bit of target practice. Wounded, he still manages to free a famous pianist from a work gang. Later, his students guess his secret when they see his injury and connect it to a story about the latter-day Scarlet Pimpernel in a newspaper. They enthusiastically volunteer to assist him.
German Gestapo General von Graum (Francis Sullivan) is determined to find out the identity of the "Pimpernel" and eliminate him. Von Graum forces Ludmilla Koslowska (Mary Morris) to help him by threatening the life of her father, a leading Polish democrat held prisoner by the Nazis. When Smith finds out, he promises her he will free Koslowski.
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Wikipedia