The Elusive Pimpernel

The Elusive Pimpernel (1950)

Foppish Sir Percy Blakeney, who secretly leads a double life as the daring rescuer of French aristocrats from the guillotine during the French Revolution, fights to save his brother-in-law while his wife is manipulated by the villainous Chauvelin into helping capture him, unaware of her husband's true identity.

Date of release
1950-11-07
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (10)
Runtime
1h 49m
Genres
Adventure, Drama, History
Director
Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Scarlet Pimpernel

The Elusive Pimpernel is a 1949 British period adventure film by the British-based director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. It was released in the United States under the title The Fighting Pimpernel. The picture stars David Niven as Sir Percy Blakeney and Margaret Leighton as Marguerite Blakeney and features Jack Hawkins, Cyril Cusack and Robert Coote. Originally intended to be a musical, the film was re-worked as a light-hearted drama.

Production

The Elusive Pimpernel was financed by Samuel Goldwyn and Alexander Korda. Neither director Michael Powell nor star David Niven was very interested in doing the film, but had their minds changed by threats of contract suspension. (Rex Harrison had been originally announced as the star.) Powell wanted to make the film as a musical, but was not allowed to, and Margaret Leighton was cast despite his objection.

The film was shot in 1949 at various British film studios in Boreham Wood, Elstree and Shepperton, Surrey. Location shooting took place in Bath, Dover, in Savernake Forest, on the Marlborough Downs, and in the stables of Carlton House Terrace, St. James's, London. In France, filming took place in the chateaux of the Loire Valley and on Mont Saint-Michel.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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