'Pimpernel' Smith

Leslie Howard was among the British actors based in Hollywood who returned home during World War I to do their bit for the war effort, and this tale of a reincarnated Scarlet Pimpernel smuggling people out from under the Nazi's noses typifies the star's attitude to traditionally English values. Deftly directed and imaginatively edited, the film may nevertheless be just too restrained and Anglo-Saxon for its own good (especially Howard's characterisation of the absent-minded archaeology professor setting out to disprove the existence of an Aryan civilisation). Stiff-upper-lip it ain't, though.