Saturday Night at the Movies: Bastille Day

The World's First Superhero

The only good thing that can be said about the French Revolution is that all the chaos, murder, and anti-Christian genocide at least led to some great English literature - and thus to some classic cinematic adaptations. Of the fictional reactions to the madness, the greatest and most famous must be Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Professor Esolen introduces the classic film version here:

A Tale of Two Cities

Yet a close second to the legendary Charles Dickens is… a penniless Hungarian immigrant. The Baroness Orczy may have had some royal Magyar blood, but by the time her family emigrated from Hungary when she was a teen in the 1880s, those aristocratic connections weren’t enough to pay the rent. Until… perhaps it was her affinity for her fellow aristocrats, perhaps it was her gratitude to the adopted country where she met the love of her life (a clergyman’s son) … she imagined one of the most influential imaginings ever imagined.

Sir Percy Blakeney is perhaps the world’s biggest fop. A caricature of an effete aristocrat, he spends his days trying on the latest fashions and talking nonsense with other dandies. He is, as his French wife intuits to her great disappointment, nothing but a gigantic waste of space. Or… is he?

While Blakeney socializes in London, blood is running in the streets of Paris. The only force saving French aristocrats from the guillotine is the death-defying, superhumanly brave, remarkably clever, mysterious benefactor known only as The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Is the Pimpernel a single person, or a group? Is he even real, or just a myth to give victims of the Revolution hope? I don’t want to spoil the story for you, so all I’ll say is that nobody has ever seen the dandy Blakeney and the heroic Pimpernel in the same place at the same time…

PG Wodehouse, the funniest writer to ever live, gave us Jeeves and Wooster. Baroness Orczy gave us Jeeves disguised as Wooster - if Jeeves came not to butle, but to foil revolutionary murders. It is a brilliant, thrilling fictional creation, one that would introduce to the world the concept of the superhero assuming a mundane secret identity - you may since have heard of one or two similar examples. Only, Orczy’s creation has no superhuman powers granted by radioactive spiders or solar rays - he has only his wits and his bravery. Will they be enough to save him?

The Scarlet Pimpernel is an absolute must-read for any homeschooling family as the perfect mix of fast-paced action and real historical events, and it makes for a whopper of a film.

If you don’t want to read the very short book yourself, it is worth subscribing to Mark Steyn’s site simply to hear his rendition of the audiobook. Leslie Howard does a fantastic job in the 1934 film version, produced by the legendary Alexander Korda, Orczy’s fellow Hungarian-born Brit.

As for Orczy herself, her work became a bestselling book and record-shattering play. If you like the Pimpernel’s heroics, rest assured, there are many, many sequels to enjoy. She truly was ahead of her time.

So go watch the tale that began it all (did I mention there’s a beautiful love story involved?). I hope you enjoy it, and have a wonderful, guillotine-free weekend!