'Pimpernel' Smith (1941)

Written by CinemaSerf on June 25, 2022

Leslie Howard updated his 1934 role as Baroness Orczy's "Scarlet Pimpernel" in this classy wartime drama. As Professor Horatio Smith, he portrays the archetypal English book-worm professor ostensibly looking for evidence of a German Aryan civilisation, but actually smuggling out POWs from under the nose of an excellently portrayed General von Graum (Francis L. Sullivan). Mary Morris plays von Graum's secret mole in a charming fashion and helps this film convey an overall more sophisticated counterfoil to the evil Nazi agenda.