This is the first review of this film on Letterboxd.
"If I wanted to simplify the investigation I could arrest you, OK?"
"The thing is that people hide different fevers."
In a room as quiet as a tomb, a grandfather clock seems to have stopped. It's the middle of the night, and a disheveled man still wearing his day clothes is lying down for a sleep that won't happen, and he knows it. He picks up a magazine, becomes bored…
"Gad, if it wasn't for our fox hunting and pheasant shooting, I dare say we should be cruel, too."
"That, Sir Percy, is the last word in cuffs!"
"Oh gad, I should hope so, for there should never be another like it."
A film of consummate wit, playfulness and charm, Korda's wonderful and lavish 1934 London Film production of The Scarlet Pimpernel is one I've adored for three decades, and which I'm admittedly highly overrating (consider it an outlier or…
Until cinephile culture began to seep into the mainstream three decades ago this was pretty much considered the greatest movie ever made if you'd have asked any random person.
Inarguably, I think, it's the most effective screen adaptation of middle-brow literature. Self-important, with mighty musical cues that don't let you forget it. An event movie, like The Birth of a Nation, and similarly still unapologetic about romanticizing the Confederacy. It's a lot of fun, and Vivien Leigh is titanic, no doubt, but there are at least two or three dozen other movies from the feted Hollywood year of 1939 that I would rather watch.
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"Angel faces hell-bent for violence" sums this one up pretty well.
Next, I'm going to re-watch L'Avventura now that I realize it's really about soda jerks hopped up on banana splits and Mary Jane ripping apart the asphalt in death-dealing hot-rod hellfire machines...
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