Also, how did I never hear of this wonderful Leslie Howard movie? How?
It's incredibly obscure! It might be available on DVD in the UK, but I've never heard of a legal transfer here; I saw it once in 2008 on a staticky videocassette via interlibrary loan from St. Louis. Occasionally TCM shows it, reliably at times of day when it's of no use to me, but I've never run across anyone else who's seen it and wasn't already a Leslie Howard fan. It really should be better known. It's a good version of the Pimpernel story; it's a great role for Howard, who wrote to his strengths while not shutting out the rest of the cast; in terms of being committedly, specifically, openly anti-Nazi while the outcome of the war was still uncertain, it's right up there with Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942). I want a DVD so that I can show it to everyone I know. At this point I'd settle for a print coming to one of the local theaters, even if I've only heard of it playing at the BFI. There's slightly more detail about the plot here, in a comment I would have folded into this post if I'd been thinking at all about it. OH DUDE THERE'S A YOUTUBE LINK WATCH IT NOW BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS.
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It's incredibly obscure! It might be available on DVD in the UK, but I've never heard of a legal transfer here; I saw it once in 2008 on a staticky videocassette via interlibrary loan from St. Louis. Occasionally TCM shows it, reliably at times of day when it's of no use to me, but I've never run across anyone else who's seen it and wasn't already a Leslie Howard fan. It really should be better known. It's a good version of the Pimpernel story; it's a great role for Howard, who wrote to his strengths while not shutting out the rest of the cast; in terms of being committedly, specifically, openly anti-Nazi while the outcome of the war was still uncertain, it's right up there with Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942). I want a DVD so that I can show it to everyone I know. At this point I'd settle for a print coming to one of the local theaters, even if I've only heard of it playing at the BFI. There's slightly more detail about the plot here, in a comment I would have folded into this post if I'd been thinking at all about it. OH DUDE THERE'S A YOUTUBE LINK WATCH IT NOW BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS.