The Star Ledger – 1999

Article by Steve Hedgpeth

You’ve seen the Broadway musical (maybe), now see the TV series. “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” Baroness Orczy’s warhorse about an English nobleman who literally risks his neck to rescue French aristocrats condemned to the guillotine during the French Revolution, is among the many classic tales retooled for latterday consumption.

The recent musical version, written by Frank Wildhorn is still playing in New York, and now A&E has co-produced with the BBC a series of three Pimpernel films starring Richard E. Grant, Elizabeth McGovern and Martin Shaw. (Film one airs Sunday at 9 p.m. the two follow ups are slated for later this year.)

Grant has called the Pimpernel “an 18th century Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent.” If the analogy isn’t spot on, as the Brits would say, there’s some truth in it, the Pimpernel is a double character: a man of action who hides behind a facade of wealth and foppishness. His real name is Sir Percy Blakeney, the name itself reeking of British Privilege.

The Pimpernel had previously been played by Leslie Howard and David Niven, in 1935 and 1950 film versions, respectively, and by Anthony Andrews in an 1982 TV movie. None of these men could have competed with Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn as a swash buckler, but neither were meant to. Each had to also play the effete snob Percy, something the buccaneering Flynn would have found a challenge.

British character actor Grant, then, is a good modern choice. In his two dozen films, which include “The Age of Innocence,” “Portrait of a Lady,” “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” ” Hudson Hawk,” and “Spice World,” no one could have confused him with an action star.

He is best playing somewhat comic, exasperated, even timid men, not too removed from Sir Percy. But to his credit Grant isn’t so anemic a presence that he can’t be believable when performing heroic deeds of deering-do as the Pimpernel.

The actor has said that he took the role because it shed him in a light in which he usually doesn’t get to bask.

“I get to play someone who kisses people, seduces people, is married, kills bad people and save good people…instead of classical story types of being the bad guy who doesn’t get the girl and who possibly gets killed in the end.”

That and he liked the clothes.

“The costumes form the period of the French Revolutionare the most fantastically flattering clothes. Women can have arses the size of Asia, and they can be completely hidden; they can have minute breasts and have them puffed up so that the look like Pamela Anderson. All the mens clothes lengthen your waist and legs and the corseted nature makes them very flattering.”

As Sir Percy’s wife, a former French actress named Marguerite, Elizabeth McGovern is less likely a choice. It’s not that McGovern isn’t a good actress — she was indeed nominated for an Oscar for her role in “Ragtime.” But audiences familiar with her may well wonder why an American actress is using an British accent to play a French woman.

The villains of the piece are Robespierre, ruthless head of the French revolutionary government, and his chief of police, Chauvelin, played by Shaw. The latter is a British actor who won’t be familiar to American audiences, but he does have the best line in “The Scarlet Pimpernel.”

After a man is tortured for information about the Pimpernel, he is brought before Chauvelin, who get’s the man to talk.

“Good,” says Chauvelin. “I thought had lost your tongue a well as your toenails.”