He has just saved dozens of French aristocrats from Robespierre’s Terror by smuggling them to England, the Island of Liberty. On the boat, gazing at the cliffs of Dover as though witness to a revelation, Leslie Howard speaks the last words of the film to his French wife, played by Merle Oberon: “Look, Marguerite …,” he says. Then a pregnant pause, and then, with deep emotion: “England!”This last line was thought up by the producer of the movie, Alexander Korda. He reckoned it was sure to get applause. He was right. The picture was a great hit for his company, London Film Productions. Korda was being calculating, but only up to a point. Leslie Howard’s words are a statement of pure Anglophilia, not patriotism, but Anglophilia. For Korda was still a Hungarian (he naturalized later). He had always admired the dashing English hero whose courage and guile were disguised by the foppish mannerisms of an aristocratic dandy. The original story of the Scarlet Pimpernel was written by Baroness Orczy, another Hungarian.
