"Pimpernel" Smith (1941)

Directed by

Leslie Howard

Genre

propaganda film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

2h

Rated

U

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 31 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A British professor travels to pre-war Europe to secretly rescue people from the Nazis. He uses his disguise as a mild-mannered academic to outwit the Gestapo.

urgentsuspensefulheroicgrimpatrioticgrimpropagandisticoptimistic

What happens

"Pimpernel" Smith (released in the US as Mister V) is a 1941 British anti-Nazi thriller, produced and directed by its star Leslie Howard, which updates his role in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) from Revolutionary France to pre-Second World War Europe. The British Film Yearbook for 1945 described his work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda". The film helped to inspire the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg to lead a real-life rescue operation in Budapest that saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi concentration camps during the last months of the Second World War. It is one of the most prestigious movies made by British National Pictures. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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