Candide ou l'Optimisme du XXe siècle (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 Funès as the officer of the Gestapo, and Daliah Lavi as Cunégonde. 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. század optimizmusa (Hungary), and Kandyd czyli optymizm XX wieku (Poland).
Contents
Plot
The film is a 20th-century adaptation of Voltaire's 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 baron's chalet. He falls in love with the baron's daughter, Cunégonde, 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. Candide's 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 Cunégonde, 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 Carné intended to create a film based on Voltaire's 1759 satire Candide, but production was abandoned. The 1986 film Live from Lincoln Center: Candide was also based on the same novel.
Cast
Jean-Pierre Cassel: Candide
Louis de Funès: the officer of the Gestapo
Pierre Brasseur: Pangloss
Daliah Lavi: Cunégonde, the daughter of baron
Nadia Gray: the live-in companion of Cunégonde
Michel Simon: the colonel Nanar
Jean Richard: the trafficker of the black market
Darío Moreno: Don Fernando, the first dictator
Luis Mariano: the second dictator South American
Jean Tissier: the doctor Jacques
Jacqueline Maillan: the puritanical mother
Jean Poiret: a policeman
Michel Serrault: a policeman
Albert Simonin: the major Simpson
Mathilde Casadesus: the baroness of Thunder-Ten-Trouck
Robert Manuel: all German officers
Jean Constantin: the king Fourak
Don Ziegler: the papa gangster
O'dett: the baron Thunder-Ten-Trouck
Michel Garland: the brother of Cunégonde
Jacques Balutin: the prescription of the colonel