Pimpernel Smith – 1941 | 100 mins | War | B&W

Plot Synopsis

Starring and directed by Leslie Howard, Pimpernel Smith updates the Scarlet Pimpernel legend from Paris to World War II Europe. Under the guise of an absent-minded university professor, Horatio Smith (Leslie Howard), helps refugees escape from the Gestapo. After he is wounded during a phoney archaeological ‘dig’ for Aryan artefacts near the Swiss border, the professor’s students realise his true identity and help him rescue further people from behind Nazi-occupied territories. Smith later goes alone to Berlin to bring out Ludmilla Koslowski (Mary Morris), a young girl who is helping the Nazis to (she thinks) save her father, and succeeds. The climatic final scenes involve a game of cat-and-mouse between Smith and his Gestapo adversary General Von Graum (Francis L. Sullivan), who has been instructed to track down the professor.