The Elusive Pimpernel The Elusive Pimpernel The Elusive Pimpernel is a 1950 British period adventure film by the British-based director-writer team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, based on the novel "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (1905) by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. It was released in the United States under the title The Fighting Pimpernel. The film stars David Niven as Sir Percy Blakeney (a.k.a. The Scarlet Pimpernel), Margaret Leighton as Marguerite Blakeney and features Jack Hawkins, Cyril Cusack and Robert Coote. Originally intended to be a musical, the film was re-worked as a light-hearted drama. During the French Revolution, the Scarlet Pimpernel (David Niven), who
The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel he was supposed to have concealed. Esther is now living in one of the poorer parts of Paris while a number of astute jailbirds are plotting to obtain her money and wealth by forcing her to choose between marrying one of their gang, Citizen Merri, or face death. The Pimpernel takes on the guise of Citizen Rateau, a tall, cadaverous-looking creature, with sunken eyes and broad, hunched up shoulders and a dry rasping cough that proclaimed the ravages of some mortal disease. Can he rescue Esther and her English lover Jack Kennard from the evil plot? Lucile Clamette and her