This was the 1982 version; I hear there’s another one. I’d have to say it’s an early spy story, set after the American Revolution set off the one in France (per some tellings), and wherein the “Bond” character is quite effete, a dancer-prancer type, a flaneur. But it’s all an affectation (a disguise) as in reality he’s fighting bravely for the crown, against depraved terrorists.
The terrorists in this case are the scary hoi polloi, a Pol Pot style mob some might say, chopping the heads off anyone with eyeglasses or who otherwise looks like they can read or, worse (code): dance the minuet and other courtly numbers. People of culture in other words, not riffraff.
“Chop chop” goes the guillotine, and the crowd roars its approval, “Off with their heads!”.
Our movie audience (the spectators, those for whom this spectacle was made) should be feeling revulsion and disgust by now, mixed with righteous outrage. How is this “Enlightenment” in any meaningful sense? It all seems so cheap and tawdry.
Countering all this madness is the Scarlett Pimpernel, who / which understands the necessity of a strong monarchy to prevent just these kinds of mental illness from spreading virally.
The SP is somewhat a Society, a peer group (think Three Musketeers) but also is lead by our hero, the faux dandy, so “fake and gay” to sound like Candace.
It’s obviously a spy movie because it’s all about betrayal, defections, switching sides, or at least appearing to, or… unless you’re quite dedicated to puzzling it all out (cut to snoring on the couch) there’s no way to be much besides confused.
And the disguises, let’s not forget the disguises.
We’re always wondering if SP is sincere in his love for his lady love, as in the first chapter of their relationship he uses their romantic picnic together as another occasion to smuggle another aristocrat out of the looney bin (where the patients now run the show). So he’s using her as a human shield of some kind?
No, he sees her as fighting the same oppressor. At first that is. Then he has reason to doubt. Then he has reason to have faith again. See what I mean? He has his ups and downs. She, meanwhile, is trying to fathom his calculus and is likewise doubtful of his integrity.
Anyway, there’s a superhero superpower coloring to the whole thing, which is of course intentional as that’s what fiction is all about doing, usually: creating larger-than-life characters who swashbuckle their way through all kinds of obstacle courses in unlikely, sometimes oddball, ways.
