Candide ou loptimisme au XXe siecle
4 /10 1 Votes
Duration Language French | Director Norbert Carbonnaux Country France | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Release date 16 December 1960 (1960-12-16) (France) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Candide ou lOptimisme du XXe siecle (English: Candide, or the Optimist of the Twentieth Century) is a 1960 French comedy drama film directed by Norbert Carbonnaux and written by Carbonnaux and Albert Simonin. It stars Jean-Pierre Cassel as Candide, Pierre Brasseur as Pangloss, Louis de Funes as the officer of the Gestapo, and Daliah Lavi as Cunegonde. The film was released under the titles Candide (alternative French title; USA), Candide oder der Optimismus im 20. Jahrhundert (West Germany), Candide, avagy a XX. szazad optimizmusa (Hungary), and Kandyd czyli optymizm XX wieku (Poland).
Contents
Plot
The film is a 20th-century adaptation of Voltaires 1759 social satire novel Candide, ou l’Optimisme. Set in the World War II-era, it follows the adventures of Candide, an orphaned Westphalian brought up in a barons chalet. He falls in love with the barons daughter, Cunegonde, and is thrown out of the house when the baron discovers them kissing. When war breaks out in 1939, Candide is drafted and then captured by the Nazis, but escapes and joins the International Red Cross. Candides improbable adventures take him into a concentration camp to rescue his tutor, Pangloss; then he is off to South America (where he endures a series of revolutions), Borneo (where he is imprisoned by a primitive tribe), Moscow (where he accidentally foments a missile crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States), and New York (where he gets mixed up in a racial clash). Finally, back in France, he retires to a country house with Cunegonde, Pangloss, and a mysterious lady who saved him from a firing squad, and settles down to write his memoirs.
Other film treatments
In 1947 Marcel Carne intended to create a film based on Voltaires Candide, but production was abandoned. The 1986 film Live from Lincoln Center: Candide was also based on the same novel.