Harold Young | The Scarlet Pimpernel / 1934

exquisite corpse

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lajos Bíró, S. N. Behrman, Robert E. Sherwood, Arthur Wimperis, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, and Alexander Korda (screenplay, based on the play and fiction by Baroness Orczy), Harold Young (director) The Scarlet Pimpernel / 1934

 

The major conceit of the 1934 British historical fiction, The Scarlet Pimpernel, is that the notorious hero of the British underground who helps to save the French aristocracy from the guillotine of Maximilein Fran Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, is none other than Sir Percy  Blakeney (Leslie Howard), hiding under the guise of a British fop so extreme in his effeminate mannerisms and role as clothes advisor to the Prince of Wales (Nigel Bruce) that no one, not even his wife, the beautiful Lady Marguerite Blakeney (Merle Oberon), might possibly suspect him as being the man who endangers his life time and again by returning to France and leading those about to be beheaded to safety. No queer, this fiction and film posit, could be so virile as to achieve those heroic deeds.

     It’s even hard for the audience of this film to comprehend that possibility since we are shown very few pieces of evidence of Percy’s actual heroic exploits. For most of the movie Sir Percy spends his time at his large estate rhyming couplets to create the popular poetic ditty that expresses the question on everyone’s mind:

 

                               They seek him here.

                               They seek him there.

                               Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

                               Is he in heaven?

                               Is he in hell?

                               That damn elusive Pimpernel.

 

     Not only is this “poem” quoted three times in the film, but is actually subject to literary analysis, perhaps giving it the honor of the most talked about piece of poetic drivel ever put to screen.

     When he isn’t quoting his poetry or advising the Prince of Wales of the necessary flare of his sleeves (“Open up your sleeves, man. Let your ruffles take the air. Let them flow! Let them ripple!”), he spends most of his time whispering into his cohort’s ears or covertly passing on small slips of paper containing messages like schoolboys announcing, “I’ll meet you in the library at midnight.”

     That event turns out to be one of the major comic moments in the movie, in which both the Pimpernel and Chauvelin snooze through the purported meeting.

     The only “action” we actually witness him participating in is while dressed up in drag as an old gypsy hag, as he ferries out several former French aristocrats while driving a covered cart inside of which, she declares, is her son suffering from the plague. Obviously, the soldiers determine not to search the cart.

     The last time he poses in harm’s way, he is dressed as a French soldier. Only in the last scene is his life truly endangered, and even then, he knows that the soldiers outside that the villain Chauvelin (Raymond Massey) has ordered to shoot him, are his own men.

      His heroic adventures, accordingly, are mostly a bore, while his absurd encounters with other males outside of his own secret society, cause them to flee and the film’s audience to chuckle in delight. Women, of course, love him just as many females continue to adore gay men who will share the latest fashion gossip and appreciate their attire.

      How Marguerite could possibly have fallen in love with this queer, even before his transformation into a fop, remains unexplained throughout the work, although it is clear that she is now most unhappy in the marriage.

      But she has her own problems given the fact that she has unintentionally betrayed some of the very members of former French royalty who her husband is attempting to save, sending them to the guillotine by sharing their whereabouts and status with Chauvelin, partly in response to the fact that the male head of that particular family had interned her in a brothel in response to his son’s attempt to marry her, presenting us with the shades of a story similar to Sweeney Todd. Chauvelin continues to haunt her throughout this tale, moreover, by capturing her beloved brother Armand St. Just (Walter Rilla) and threatening her with his death if she does find out who the real Pimpernel is at the movie’s requisite grand ball.

      Her discovery that the Pimpernel and her husband are one in the same through a large family portrait portraying the Pimpernel insignia on a finger ring, only complicates events, instead of resolving them. But if nothing else, it certainly restores her love of her husband and explains the enormous transformation of his personality since their marriage.

      She and Sir Percy escape the net Chauvelin has put around their French hideaway, Le Leon d’or tavern, but it means the end of any further attempt to save the French mean and women from the guillotine, proving what Percy has himself explained would happen if their group were to be unmasked. Sir Percy, presumably, will now go back to his more masculine heterosexual self, quoting Shakespeare instead of his silly ditties, but I can assure he will not be half as much fun.

    Why it took six significant writers to cook up this barebones plot and dialogue is beyond explanation. Perhaps each of them contributed, like a cadavre exquis, one line of the poem.

 

Los Angeles, April 3, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2023).

Siar Sedig | Last Exit Home / 2012

imagining himself as a woman to attract his man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Siar Sedig (screenwriter and director) Last Exit Home / 2012 [11 minutes]

 

This short film by Dutch director Siar Sedig truly irritated me.

    The central character, Leonard (Roy de Vries) is a man of habit, everyday taking the same subway route home, so often in fact, that he recognizes almost all of his fellow passengers.

    There is always a quite beautiful woman, Lisa (Caroline Bech) flirting with him or whoever else might catch her eye. Leonard, although almost psychotically shy, is actually a good-looking young man.

    But this day, for the first time, another rider, a quite handsome young man, Lucas (Raynor Arkenbout) enters the subway and sits alone. Almost immediately both the flirtatious woman and the passive Leonard recognize his beauty. Yet Leonard, in the 21st century, can seemingly not imagine that a handsome, slightly unshaved hirsute male might not be attracted to the woman attempting to lure men to her side, and needs to imagine himself as the woman, despite he being sis-gender, clearly attracted to the man himself.

     When it notices the man gets up to leave the subway that he has left his scarf behind, Leonard takes the brave action of finally retrieving the scarf, exciting when the man does, and finally calling out to him, after a great many pauses. But again, in his imagination, in order to be loved he turns into the woman, a trope I finally perceives as utterly obnoxious. One can be shy, doubt whether he can attract such a handsome stud, surely without imagining a gender change. This seems like material from the turn of the century when gay behavior was considered, even sympathetically, as being female related. Shyness and uncertainty does surely not require an imaginary shift into womanhood to explain.

     In fact, finally seeing our mess of confusions with his scarf, the stranger smiles, even seems somewhat attracted. Of course, Leonard is too tongue-tied to say anything, and simply hands the scarf over, returning to his endless routine.

     In terms of Vito Russo’s vision of gay figures in film history, he might as well have been shot in the head. His dream vanishes as he returns to a reality of his own making.

     Frankly, there is no excuse for this kind of film in 2012. Dutch filmmaking is so much richer and complex. I find this film frankly embarrassing.

 

Los Angeles, September 23, 20026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (September 2026).

 

George Velez, Jr | The Goodbye / 2018

the happiest moment of his life

by Douglas Messerli

 

George Velez, Jr. (screenwriter and director) The Goodbye / 2018 [12 minutes]

 

How do you forgive when you’ve just suddenly discovered that as a young gay man you are about to die in six months. How do you forgive your former lover Shane (Mark Teale) who returns repentant but who treated you badly, hurting you terribly? Or a father (Mike Kelson) who walked out on you and your mother (Lisa Leilani) 3 days after you told him you were gay, even if the father explains that the problems between him and your mother had long been an issue before that day? The father now has a new family and a new son, who Joe (Shaun Mendum) suggests will probably grow up straight and play football, everything his father desires from a son.

     How do you deal with a meaningless job as a coffee counter clerk where everyone demands their precise combination of “a skinny” at just at just the right temperature with no chocolate on top or scream at you when the coffee, fresh from spigot, is declared ice cold? In that case, like Joe, you simply walk off the job.

     But everything else facing him appears to involve people trying to reenter his life to be able to grant themselves solace after adding pain to his own now short life. His father’s request to be allowed back into his life is countered by Joe’s comment: “Well, there’s not much of a life left.” He is already coughing up blood, the fact of which he hides from his mother and even from his best friend Kelly (Emi Maj), the only one who doesn’t seem to be asking for forgiveness, instead giving of her love as a friend.

      Joe is not very good at forgiving, particularly given his death sentence by the doctor. But in his hatred he also left terribly alone. His mother, however, keeps attempting to move him back into life and possible reconciliation, planning a day at the beach—strange since he lives and grew up near the beach—with herself, his estranged father, and his friend Kelly, which in a narrational aside Joe describes as the moment of his greatest happiness.

      This unsentimental short film by British director George Velez, Jr. does not have anything terribly profound to offer, but serves rather as a simple testament to the hundreds of lives of young men and women who have not yet had the opportunity to make all their mistakes or find their loves, or discover new worlds, and yet experience intense moments of joy in their short lives. Defying the challenge of Dylan Thomas, this film attempts to go gentle into the dark night.

 

Los Angeles, September 14, 2022 | Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).

Jirka Černý | Kdo jsi? (Who Are You?) 2021

who am i?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jirka Černý (director) Kdo jsi? (Who Are You?) 2021 [14 minutes]

Alex/David and a man with many another name (Tomás Bares) is a thief, stealing everything from a bottle of liquor to the billfold out of a man’s pocket as he sucks him off.

   He doesn’t even have time to check out the billfolds he’s already filched before it’s time to keep his appointment with an internet meet up (Jirka Černý).

   His host insists they first share a light meal, and when he goes off to the bathroom returns to find his guest already in the kitchen looking through the drawers. He queries his host if he has just moved in, but the host argues no, that he simply likes to live a minimalist life, offering to show him the rest of the flat.

    As they join one another in the bed, the thief takes the role as the top, but the host soon flips the situation, and suggests that he might like the experience of handcuffs; but when he puts them on, addressing his guest not as Peter which is the name he has taken for the evening, but the string of other names he has used in his many robberies, the thief recognizes that his bedmate is a policeman.

     Asked outright why he is a thief, the man replies that he has been kicked out of the orphanage, and no choice in order to survive.

     The inquisitor finds that he wears a small necklace with a fish, and recognizes it immediately as being a symbol of the same orphanage from which he was released. Obviously, he has found another route into society, but recognizes how difficult it was.

     He releases his prisoner and demands that he leave immediately. Peter/Alex/David does so, but first places the recently stolen billfolds and his necklace by the door, indicating perhaps his intentions of attempting to change his life or, at least, his desire for reform.

  I’m not at all fond of the standard self-descriptions of this film, touting itself as a work about the dangers of meeting up on the internet. This could have been so much more profound without that claptrap:

 

“Nowadays, many people use dating apps just for hook-ups. If you want to have sex, you can have it almost instantly. However, the price for this is our lost identity. This has many advantages but also many disadvantages, which some people may misuse. What happens if a thief and a policeman decide to use such a dating app?”

 

     The fact is, that this is a tale of desperation and sympathy the likes of which is seldom shown by police officials.

     Surely our underground cop will have to pay in some manner for releasing his prisoner back into society without due justice. That such empathy can still be represented even by officials should remind us that they too are human beings. It is hard to perceive that with the daily reports in the US of ICE round-ups and murders of normal migrants and citizens. In the Czech Republic, apparently, there are still empathetic officials, no longer from the world of Kafka.

 

Los Angeles, September 23, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2026).