The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmeska Orczy 1934

Go to YOUTUBE movies take the 1:32:50 one (it’s clearer)

1. As you go through the film, identify the following characters:

and their political ideologies and roles during this revolutionary period of French history:

Sir Percy Blakeney

Lady Margurite Blakeney née Marguerite St. Just

Armand St. Just

The Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive

Mlle. (Mademoiselle) Suzanne de Tourney

Sir Andrew Foulkes

M.(Monsieur) Chauvelin

2. How had Marguerite St. Just inadvertently betrayed the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family so that they died cruel deaths at the hands of the revolutionaries on the guillotine? In your opinion were their deaths justified or not?

3.What do these terms mean?

émigré

citoyen/citoyenne

the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel

a scarlet pimpernel is a _______________

the guillotine

4. According to the story, why does the Sacarlet Pimpernel risk his life to rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine of citoyen Robespierre?

5. Who is the real Scarlet Pimpernel then?

6. If you catch it really fast, the Count de Tournay de Basserive explains ever so briefly why he and his family are imprisoned and awaiting the guillotine. What does he say? [right at the beginning of the film]

7. With whom do you sympathize in this film? How did Hollywood arrange for this to happen or are you from an aristocratic family background? [Most citizens from the USA are from lower class background; comfortable people mostly didn’t leave home.] So, have you been had by the Baroness Orczy and Hollywood?

8. Read the summary of the life of Baroness Orczy. What events in the life of her family caused her to take up the cause of the French aristocrats in her novel(s). [see the supplementary readings for unit 7]