PIMPERNEL SMITH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 147, 17 April 1942, Page 14

PIMPERNEL SMITH

(B.E.F.)

INARILY I don’t much like making comparisons, but a comparison between Pimpernel Smith and the recent International Lady seems

a good way of appraising the worth of th> former. The other day I had an argument with a friend who took me to task for giving a fairly low grading

to International Lady, which he had enjoyed very much. My defence was that the film had been so completely artificial and unrelated to real events, viewing the war simply as a convenient background for melodramatic adventures by impossible characters. Admittedly it did very well at the box office, but this was mainly because it took people’s minds off the war: which (as I suggested in my review at the time) was rather damning comment to have to make

about what purported to be a realistic picture of total war on the Secret Service front. * % * OW this introduction is relevant to Pimpernel Smith because this film also deals with impossible characters in melodramatic situations against a somewhat similar background, but unlike International Lady it does not pretend to be what it is not. A foreword labels it as a "fantasy," and we have it on the authority of Leslie Howard, its producer, director, and star, that it is " just an amusing piece of hokum." Quite apart from any other considerations — and there are several — such frankness and honesty of intention would alone make it a better picture than International Lady. Actually, taken in the spirit in which its producer has offered it-as entertainment pure and simplePimpernel Smith is quite the most enjoyable show I have seen for weeks, as good in its way (and it is much the same way) as The Lady Vanishes. * ae Eo UT I should like to be sure that you do take it in that spirit, because even such an ordinarily level-headed critic as my renowned and much-admired colleague C. A. Lejeune has on this occasion been so carried away by emotion that she has rhapsodically declared Pimpernel Smith to be a fine " anthology of the British Character," and has discovered all kinds of hidden meanings in it-such as that "everything that these islands mean to our people is implicit in the film for those who choose to find it"’ With deference to Miss Lejeune, this is sentimental nonsense. For one thing, " British" is a very broad term and includes most of the spots on the map marked red, but even if one narrows it to "English" it is still nonsense. For although Professor Smith is such a likeable fellow it would, I submit, be a rather bad outlook for Britain’s War Effort if we had to regard him as The Typical Englishman. He is the absent-minded professor of all the funny stories and cartoons; so vague that he "blends into the landscape," so forgetful that he can’t remember what day it is nor the names of his best friends. He makes mildly academic jokes about Oxford and Cambridge, Shakespeare and Aphrodite; he regards women as a nuisance; and he is interested (or gives the appearance of being interested) in nothing but digging up the dead past. Now much of this, of course, is a deliberate pose in the tradition of the original Scarlet Pimpernel — the mask of comic ineffectualness hiding the man of action. This modern Pimpernel is busy snatching, not French aristocrats from the. guillotine, but men, of culture and learning from the Nazi execution squads and concentration camps in the days just before this war; and Leslie Howard brings as much charm and humour to the part as he did to his early role as Sir Percy Blakeney. But there is a difference. The distinction between the foppish Sir Percy and the daring Scarlet Pimpernel was clear cut, whereas in Pimpernel Smith you hardly know where the meandering professor of archaeology ends and the elusive, re-

sourceful rescuer of Nazi victims begins. Professor Smith’s haphazard vagueness seems to be not so much a part of his pose as a part of his (English) nature. And if one were to believe with Miss Lejeune that the film presents a faithful portrait of the typical English character, than it would be logical to believe that it is equally faithful in depicting the Nazi character. Well, it may be; but if it is, one can only wonder why we aren’t winning the war much faster than we are! Why, in fact, we didn’t win it in the first few months. For the Nazis of Pimpernel Smith are merely playthings in the professorial hands. Accompanied by a band of young students, he roams almost at will through Germany, making a rescue here and a rescue there under the very noses of the Gestapo who, for all the evidence to the contrary, are a bunch of comic-opera blunderers who bawl each other out on all oceasions. The girl they depute to ensnare the elusive Smith is a Pole whose father the Englishman is in process of rescuing-and of course she goes over to his side. (The role of the girl is most interestingly played by Mary Morris.) When, after a successful raid has been carried out on one of their concentration camps, the Nazis do find themselves with some of the Pimpernel’s band in their clutches, they show what can only be described as criminal negligence in allowing them to slip out again unmolested. And the mild Professor himself ambles in and out of Government headquarters, pulling the wool over official eyes in handfuls and leaving a wake of baffled, frothing Teutons. * of * HE equivalent of Chauvelin in this story is the gross, chocolate-guzzling Reichminister General von Graum, Though apparently he is Germany’s Chief of Police, his official status is actually rather indeterminate, for when he is not cursing Professor Smith he is cursing the Army or the.Gestapo and appears to be responsible for neither, Von Graum is portrayed by Francis Sullivan with such a rich sense of fun and rotund absurdity that he comes near to stealing Leslie Howard’s thunder; but with regard to this character I feel again impelled to ask why anyone should ex- ( Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) pect us to look upon von Graum as farcical (he is plainly nothing else) and the Englishman as typical. + * * IND you, I don’t deny that Pimpernel Smith in some respects is typically English, in the sense that no other country could have produced it, and none but a British audience would appreciate it fully. This is particularly true of the humour. There is one delightful sequence in which von Graum, trying to analyse the British sense of humour -which he has been told is our " secret weapon "-is completely baffled by Punch, P. G. Wodehouse, Edward Lear, and Lewis Carroll. (Though, for that matter, there are plenty of Britons who can’t raise a laugh-nowadays a sneer might be more popular-at P. G. Wodehouse, and who are as unimpressed by Carroll’s " Jabberwocky" as van Graum is). And again, I suppose it is typically English to have university students so immature that their professor treats them almost like naughty children. And it may be typically English also to deplore violence as the Professor does, and to use it apologetically. Yet to say that in some ways a film is typically English, is a very different matter from calling it "an anthology of the British (English?) character." No, I prefer Leslie Howard’s own tag: " Just an amusing piece of hokum." That is at least honest and strictly accurate — though I will admit that, by giving so modest a label to a film which is such jolly good fun and such well-made entertainment, Mr. Howard has himself revealed the British characteristic of under-statement!