"They seek him here, they seek him there..."
...and if they're movie makers, he sometimes proves to be as elusive to them as to those Frenchies! :)
Yes, of course it's all about that demmed elusive Pimpernel!
I watched the 1982 movie version...hmm, perhaps at the age of 12 or so, getting one of my childhood crushes on actors. :) Alas, it completely ruined Anthony Andrews's Ivanhoe for me later! Anyway, I'm not really sure why, but I decided to watch the movie again, and then was thrilled to find some of the books on Project Gutenberg and Librivox, so I decided to give them a try too. And, sure enough, here I am with a book-vs.-movie kind of entry!
The main difference is that the movie is so..."light and bright and sparkling" *winks at cressidarambles* and the book is not. Baroness Orczy's Sir Percy effectively plays the part of a fop, but that part seems to be almost the opposite of what he really is like. In fact, he's quite happy to angst around once in a while, and he does stupid stuff like kissing the floor on which his wife's foot just stepped (having previously driven the poor woman to tears). But one thing is, thankfully, the same: both versions have enough brains to outwit the whole of the revolutionary France, and it's their brains, not muscles, that they use throughout the narrative.
I think the book does a wonderful job of Chauvelin. Even though I still squee quietly at Ian McKellen's acting, the book's Chauvelin is so much more impressive. He's a really worthy adversary, an enemy one fears and respects, and it's an enormous pleasure to read about those clashes of intellect between him and Sir Percy. In the movie, he's often pretty pathetic; never so in the book. In fact, I sort of wish I could read a fanfic where those two could meet on neutral grounds and have a chat! (On second thought...perhaps not. I don't think I could bear a possible epilogue of hot sex between the two.)
Another great character in the books is Marguerite. I don't think the movie got her "wrong" in any way, but she didn't get as much "screen time" as in the original, where she's truly heroic. Also, she's blonde in the book! BLONDE! Although I think they did a great job casting Jane Seymour for the part, I do wish they'd kept the original hair color and broken the stereotype of "action brunette, feeble blonde" the way JRRT did. :-P By the way, the movie did break a stereotype and made the heroine pick the funny lovable guy (Percy) instead of the dark and brooding one (Chauvelin)!
Much as I've been enjoying the books, at some point I just wanted to scream at the author, "Woman, we DO get that you're against the French Revolution, just move along!!" Really, even though the French Revolution repeated the fate of other great undertakings and ended in a bloody mess, there was more reason behind it than just Robespierre & Co.'s innate thirst for aristocratic blood.
So...as you can see, it's the rare case of me, usually a book purist, liking, and to some extent even preferring, a movie version. I was a little uncomfortable with the idea myself, until I had a peek at the 1999-2001 version! You know, I could even forgive them for turning Sir Percy into a swashbuckler instead of a mastermind, if someone got me drunk enough, but...they call him my lord.
Sir Percy Blakeney, baronet.
MY LORD.
In a British movie, made by the British, with a British cast.
*headdesk*