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A British canvas on the Reign of Terror, not William Hamilton sobriety but the inimitable Fauvism of The Archers. Up and down goes the guillotine, Chauvelin (Cyril Cusack) wears grim black like a penitent inquisitor and contemplates the Revolution's bloodthirsty side, "steam must escape from the boiling pot." The thorn in his side is "that damned elusive Pimpernel," one minute a scraggly hag atop a melon cart and the next a Cockney knave with rotting chompers and eyepatch. (His peg leg makes for a handy club during an abrupt melee.) The ultimate disguise is dandified Sir Percy (David Niven), who recites verses about his adventurous alter ego to sweaty colleagues in multicolored sauna togas, "a masterpiece." He tickles the Prince of Wales (Jack Hawkins) but bores the missus (Margaret Leighton), who can't recognize the swashbuckler in the fop she married. "A dangerous game, falling in love with a phantom." The musical Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger originally envisioned is everywhere visible, characters frequently find themselves on the verge of breaking into song while colors pulsate. "The tide of new ideas" is of little use to the hero, who poses as a living statue with putty nose and cockatoo on his shoulder and clicks his tongue at the Parisians storming the palace. The view from the fortress tower gives the desert that turns into water, green hills at dawn with a pinkish herd of sheep in the foreground set the stage for a carriage chase, a hundred such delights throughout. Fireworks in a snuff box comprise the key image, and from there the filmmakers are ready for Tales of Hoffmann. "You're quite a conjurer, after all." Cinematography by Christopher Challis. With Robert Coote, Arlette Marchal, Gérard Nery, Edmond Audran, Charles Victor, Danielle Godet, David Hutcheson, Eugene Deckers, David Oxley, and Patrick Macnee.
--- Fernando F. Croce |