Movies - The Scarlet Pimpernel

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	Movies - The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the French Revolution. It was first published in 1905, and is seen as a precursor to the spy fiction and the superhero genres. It gave rise to numerous sequels, and has been adapted several times for television and film.

The literary character

The action takes place during the French Revolution, when a secret society of English aristocrats, called the "League of the Scarlet Pimpernel", is engaged in rescuing their French counterparts from the guillotine. Their leader, the Scarlet Pimpernel, takes his nickname from the small red flower (illustration, left) with which he signs his messages. No one except his small band of 19 followers knows his true identity.

Orczy wrote numerous sequels. Other of her works are related to the series, including The Laughing Cavalier (1914) and The First Sir Percy (1921), about an ancestor of the Pimpernel's; Pimpernel and Rosemary, about a descendant; and The Scarlet Pimpernel Looks at the World (1933), a depiction of the 1930s world from the point of view of Sir Percy. Some of her non-related Revolutionary-period novels reference the Scarlet Pimpernel or the League, most notably The Bronze Eagle (1915).

Precursor to superheroes

The Scarlet Pimpernel is often cited as an early (perhaps the earliest) precursor of the superhero of United States comic books: he is an independently wealthy person with a secret identity which he maintains in action by disguises, while in public life he appears as a politically irrelevant dandy to draw attention away from himself. In his hero guise, he accomplishes good, in a field in which the state is not competent to act, with his superior reasoning and fighting abilities. However, he never in the entire canon takes a life or indeed seriously wounds a foe. He even has a symbol in his name, which he does use as an emblem, though not on a costume. Johnston McCulley's Zorro (1919) and Bob Kane's Batman
(1939) later followed the same pattern.

Film and other media

Hollywood took to the Pimpernel early and often; most such movies have been based on a melange of the original book and Eldorado (1913). Film treatments were done as early as 1917 and again in 1928 and 1937. The 1934 film directed by Harold Young, starring Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon, is widely regarded as the best screen adaptation, although Orczy herself believed Oberon miscast. It was also remade by Leslie Howard in 1941 as Pimpernel Smith, set in Nazi Germany instead of Paris. A popular TV adaptation was filmed in 1982, starring Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour and Ian McKellen. A British TV series based on the novel, produced by ITC Entertainment, aired for a season in 1956. The novel has even been parodied as a Warner Bros cartoon short featuring Daffy Duck (The Scarlet Pumpernickel) alongside Melissa Duck, in 1954.

By contrast, a 1950 version (The Elusive Pimpernel) starring David Niven has been widely panned by serious fans of the canon.

In 1987, the BBC sitcom Blackadder III included an episode, "Nob and Nobility", in which the Scarlet Pimpernel is praised by everyone, apart from Mr. E. Blackadder, who sees nothing admirable in "filling London with a load of garlic-chewing French toffs... looking for sympathy all the time simply because their fathers had their heads cut off". The episode ends with Blackadder killing two Noblemen claiming to be the Pimpernel.

The BBC filmed the story as two 3-part mini-series in 1999-2000 with Richard E. Grant in the title role and Martin Shaw as Chauvelin. The series was shown on the A&E network in the United States.

Returning to the work's stage roots, a 1997 Broadway musical based on the story was composed by Frank Wildhorn and written by Nan Knighton. This musical starred Douglas Sills as Sir Percy Blakeney, Christine Andreas as Marguerite Blakeney, and Terrence Mann as Citizen Chauvelin. In 1998 a soundtrack was recorded by the original cast.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Scarlet Pimpernel ]

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