'Pimpernel' Smith
Jun. 10th, 2020 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustAlerted by sovay that there were watchable copies of 'Pimpernel' Smith on the internet, we tracked one down - not on the Wayback Machine, with which our television declines to communicate, but on YouTube, which we were able to watch together in the comfort it deserves. For an assessment of the film rooted in long-term affection and knowledge of the medium which is both deep and extensive, read sovay's version; what you get here is more questions than answers.
Well, one answer: yes, thank you, I enjoyed it very much; two hours well spent. It is - and I don't think this is hidden at all, although I was not expecting it - pure propaganda: why it is right to oppose the Nazis, why we will defeat them and why America should join us in doing so. This is not a message that gets old. Oddly, for a wartime propaganda film, it isn't gung-ho about war, declaring with its hero: "I hate violence. It seems such a paradox to kill a man before you can persuade him what's right. So uncivilized!"
The film lays its cards on the table from the first: with the title, and with the preamble:
Is the title ever explained? If it is, I missed it. The inverted commas in the title surely warn the audience that it should recognise the allusion to The Scarlet Pimpernel, presumably from the earlier film rather than the novel - seven years earlier, but Leslie Howard was presumably a big enough star to jog the memory. So as soon as we meet him, we know that Professor Smith - and he isn't entirely believable as a Smith, even before we discover his connections with the staff of the Embassy - is a mythic figure, a modern-day Scarlet Pimpernel, an everyman who nonetheless embodies those courageous men rescuing the victims of the Nazis (the text is specific that they are men, and the name Smith is specifically English). Reading this in the 21st century, it's eary to think of examples of such heroism, though not primarily performed by Englishmen, but were these widely known at the time? Wikipedia tells of Raoul Wallenberg seeing the film, for example, at a time when the work for which he is now famous was not yet carried out, let alone public. So there's another question: what did this preamble mean to its original audience?
Never mind: "The tale we are about to unfold to you is a fantasy. None of its characters are living persons...." I take this as fair warning that what follows is not realism: the daring rescues which are carried out during Professor Smoth's summer archaeology trip take place at scattered locations from the Swiss to the Belgian borders: this baffles the Nazis, and it baffled me, too, until I concluded that this is, after all, a fantasy, and that damned elusive Pimpernel is a spirit, a shadow on a wall, a snatch of whistled melody, with impossible abilities to relocate, impossible sources of information. Did I ever fear for Professor Smith? Maybe a little. But the tension about whether he will escape from the latest trap has a meta quality. Is this the kind of film which will end in a heroic death for the central character, and the challenge to others to carry on his work?
No, this is the kind of film in which the ghost vanishes, leaving his words hanging in the air: "Don't worry, I shall be back. We shall all be back." Of course it is, because this is the message of the film, that the Allies, not just Professor Smith but all his young men, including the Americans (Maxwell is singled out for praise: his conduct throughout, in spite of occasional fits of lunacy, has been most exemplary). THe action takes place on the eve of the war, but that promise to return is made as General von Graum announces that tonight Germany invades Poland, and with the knowledge of 1941 (that's the release date, anyway; production can't have been much earlier) Britain was already back, and the film does its best to encourage the USA to follow suit. This is one aspect of its function as propaganda.
The other, and the thing that gives it enduring relevance, is that it manages to be anti-Nazi without being anti-German. The enemies of Nazism rescued by 'Pimpernel' Smith are "scientists, men of letters, artists, doctors ..." nationality unspecified, the Polish newspaper editor but also his German contributors, and the relationship of the archaeologists with the Berlin museum is cordial. The Nazis will be defeated because they are out-thought, out-created - and out-laughed: our secret weapon is the British sense of humour. In 1941, this show of confidence, this declaration of faith, is what viewers needed to hear: it can be forgiven for sounding a little smug, a little self-congratulatory to the modern ear.
For a mythic hero, Professor Smith has immense charm, and some very sound principles: he too can be forgiven much. But he doesn't have much time for women. His first appearance shows him admiring the one female for whom he makes an exception, the Aphrodite Kallipygos whom he, if not quite created, then discovered. You might expect him to be a worshipper of Athena, but no, his devotion is for Aphrodite, and an Aphrodite who is identified by her very fleshly endowment (although the camera is too discreet to show any evidence of this). A woman teacher, misidentifying the goddess (not entirely unreasonably, on the basis of what is showm) to her gaggle of pupils is routed, and the Professor strides into the lecture theatre to drive out the three female undergraduates whose presence he finds deplorable. I suppose the plot requires an all-male party for the summer expedition, but this could have been achieved by not having any women in the class to begin with, which would not have struck me as anomalous for 1939. Although, as it happens - I'm so glad you asked! - and although women were not actually awarded degrees at Cambridge until 1948, Cambridge had already appointed its first woman professor in 1939. In archaeology. (Durham's first woman professor was also in archaeology, but much later.) Our Will o' the Wisp is a master of disguises, so perhaps 'professor of archaeology' is just another, more sustained disguise? This would explain much about his archaeological practice (the treatment of finds, the ability to prove the non-esictence of a civilisation by excavation ...).
Horatio Smith does eventually meet a woman for whom he tears up his photograph of Aphrodite, but ungratefully, I felt this only made things worse. Does there have to be a romance sub-plot? And if there does, does it have to involve the central character? Ludmilla initially attracts the attention of David Maxwell, one of Smith's students; she is the daughter of Sidimir Koslowski, whose escape he is planning; there's plenty of motivation here without romance, but if romance we must have, could it not be with one of the students? Apparently not. So Smith finds himself with another femaile to whom he can condescend, albeit affectionately, a quasi-daughter, a woman who panics, who does not have confidence in him, whom he can tell "You're so human." He deserves better. It is possible that my hostility to this character owes something to her cut-glass accent: for a Polish gilr sent to the USA for safety, those vowels are unexpected, even suspicious.
The film isn't perfect, then, but what is? It's a fairy tale, with an attractive (if flawed) hero, its heart is in the right place and it kept me entertained.
sovay that there were watchable copies of 'Pimpernel' Smith on the internet, we tracked one down - not on the Wayback Machine, with which our television declines to communicate, but on YouTube, which we were able to watch together in the comfort it deserves. For an assessment of the film rooted in long-term affection and knowledge of the medium which is both deep and extensive, read sovay's version; what you get here is more questions than answers.Well, one answer: yes, thank you, I enjoyed it very much; two hours well spent. It is - and I don't think this is hidden at all, although I was not expecting it - pure propaganda: why it is right to oppose the Nazis, why we will defeat them and why America should join us in doing so. This is not a message that gets old. Oddly, for a wartime propaganda film, it isn't gung-ho about war, declaring with its hero: "I hate violence. It seems such a paradox to kill a man before you can persuade him what's right. So uncivilized!"
The film lays its cards on the table from the first: with the title, and with the preamble:
The tale we are about to unfold to you is a fantasy. None of its characters are living persons. But it is based on the exploits of a number of courageous men who were and are still risking their lives daily to aid those unfortunate people of many nationalities who are being persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis. To these champions of freedom this story is dedicated.
Is the title ever explained? If it is, I missed it. The inverted commas in the title surely warn the audience that it should recognise the allusion to The Scarlet Pimpernel, presumably from the earlier film rather than the novel - seven years earlier, but Leslie Howard was presumably a big enough star to jog the memory. So as soon as we meet him, we know that Professor Smith - and he isn't entirely believable as a Smith, even before we discover his connections with the staff of the Embassy - is a mythic figure, a modern-day Scarlet Pimpernel, an everyman who nonetheless embodies those courageous men rescuing the victims of the Nazis (the text is specific that they are men, and the name Smith is specifically English). Reading this in the 21st century, it's eary to think of examples of such heroism, though not primarily performed by Englishmen, but were these widely known at the time? Wikipedia tells of Raoul Wallenberg seeing the film, for example, at a time when the work for which he is now famous was not yet carried out, let alone public. So there's another question: what did this preamble mean to its original audience?
Never mind: "The tale we are about to unfold to you is a fantasy. None of its characters are living persons...." I take this as fair warning that what follows is not realism: the daring rescues which are carried out during Professor Smoth's summer archaeology trip take place at scattered locations from the Swiss to the Belgian borders: this baffles the Nazis, and it baffled me, too, until I concluded that this is, after all, a fantasy, and that damned elusive Pimpernel is a spirit, a shadow on a wall, a snatch of whistled melody, with impossible abilities to relocate, impossible sources of information. Did I ever fear for Professor Smith? Maybe a little. But the tension about whether he will escape from the latest trap has a meta quality. Is this the kind of film which will end in a heroic death for the central character, and the challenge to others to carry on his work?
No, this is the kind of film in which the ghost vanishes, leaving his words hanging in the air: "Don't worry, I shall be back. We shall all be back." Of course it is, because this is the message of the film, that the Allies, not just Professor Smith but all his young men, including the Americans (Maxwell is singled out for praise: his conduct throughout, in spite of occasional fits of lunacy, has been most exemplary). THe action takes place on the eve of the war, but that promise to return is made as General von Graum announces that tonight Germany invades Poland, and with the knowledge of 1941 (that's the release date, anyway; production can't have been much earlier) Britain was already back, and the film does its best to encourage the USA to follow suit. This is one aspect of its function as propaganda.
The other, and the thing that gives it enduring relevance, is that it manages to be anti-Nazi without being anti-German. The enemies of Nazism rescued by 'Pimpernel' Smith are "scientists, men of letters, artists, doctors ..." nationality unspecified, the Polish newspaper editor but also his German contributors, and the relationship of the archaeologists with the Berlin museum is cordial. The Nazis will be defeated because they are out-thought, out-created - and out-laughed: our secret weapon is the British sense of humour. In 1941, this show of confidence, this declaration of faith, is what viewers needed to hear: it can be forgiven for sounding a little smug, a little self-congratulatory to the modern ear.
For a mythic hero, Professor Smith has immense charm, and some very sound principles: he too can be forgiven much. But he doesn't have much time for women. His first appearance shows him admiring the one female for whom he makes an exception, the Aphrodite Kallipygos whom he, if not quite created, then discovered. You might expect him to be a worshipper of Athena, but no, his devotion is for Aphrodite, and an Aphrodite who is identified by her very fleshly endowment (although the camera is too discreet to show any evidence of this). A woman teacher, misidentifying the goddess (not entirely unreasonably, on the basis of what is showm) to her gaggle of pupils is routed, and the Professor strides into the lecture theatre to drive out the three female undergraduates whose presence he finds deplorable. I suppose the plot requires an all-male party for the summer expedition, but this could have been achieved by not having any women in the class to begin with, which would not have struck me as anomalous for 1939. Although, as it happens - I'm so glad you asked! - and although women were not actually awarded degrees at Cambridge until 1948, Cambridge had already appointed its first woman professor in 1939. In archaeology. (Durham's first woman professor was also in archaeology, but much later.) Our Will o' the Wisp is a master of disguises, so perhaps 'professor of archaeology' is just another, more sustained disguise? This would explain much about his archaeological practice (the treatment of finds, the ability to prove the non-esictence of a civilisation by excavation ...).
Horatio Smith does eventually meet a woman for whom he tears up his photograph of Aphrodite, but ungratefully, I felt this only made things worse. Does there have to be a romance sub-plot? And if there does, does it have to involve the central character? Ludmilla initially attracts the attention of David Maxwell, one of Smith's students; she is the daughter of Sidimir Koslowski, whose escape he is planning; there's plenty of motivation here without romance, but if romance we must have, could it not be with one of the students? Apparently not. So Smith finds himself with another femaile to whom he can condescend, albeit affectionately, a quasi-daughter, a woman who panics, who does not have confidence in him, whom he can tell "You're so human." He deserves better. It is possible that my hostility to this character owes something to her cut-glass accent: for a Polish gilr sent to the USA for safety, those vowels are unexpected, even suspicious.
The film isn't perfect, then, but what is? It's a fairy tale, with an attractive (if flawed) hero, its heart is in the right place and it kept me entertained.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-09 07:56 pm (UTC)I somehow missed this post entirely at the time! I am glad you enjoyed the film.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 05:09 pm (UTC)Not at all! I literally did not see it until yesterday.