Captain Corelli's Mandolin (film)

Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), is an epic war film directed by John Madden. Based on Louis de Bernières' 1994 novel of the same name, It stars famous actors such as Nicolas Cage and Penélope Cruz. The film is dedicated to the thousands of Italian soldiers executed by German forces on Cephalonia in September 1943 and to the people of Cephalonia who were killed in the post-war earthquake.

Plot

The bucolic beauty of Greece's Ionian islands have been invaded by Italy, bringing a large Italian garrison and a few Germans to the tranquil island of Cephallonia, which immediately surrenders. Captain Antonio Corelli, an officer of the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division with an irrepressibly jovial personality and a passion for the mandolin, and who trains his battery of men (who have never fired a shot) in choral singing, initially alienates a number of the villagers, including Pelagia. The daughter of the village doctor, she is an educated and strong-willed woman, and while at first offended by the Italian soldier's behaviour, she slowly warms to Corelli's charm and mandolin playing as they are forced to share her father's home when the doctor agrees to put him up in exchange for medical supplies.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously in the United States as Corelli's Mandolin, is a novel of 1994 by the British writer Louis de Bernières, set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the Italian and German occupation of the Second World War.

The main characters are Antonio Corelli, an Italian army captain, and Pelagia, the daughter of the local physician, Dr Iannis. An important event in the novel is the massacre of Italian troops by the Germans in September 1943 – the Italian Acqui Division had refused to surrender and had fought the Germans for nine days before running out of ammunition. Some 1,500 Italian soldiers died in the fighting, 5,000 were massacred after surrendering, and the rest were shipped to Germany, of whom 3,000 drowned when the ship carrying them hit a mine.

In 2003, the novel was listed at number 19 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

Synopsis

The story begins with Dr. Iannis, an experienced and multilingual doctor who has a well-established practice on the Greek island of Cephallonia. Iannis lives with his daughter Pelagia; Pelagia's mother died of tuberculosis when Pelagia was still a girl. Pelagia, now a young woman, is headstrong and intelligent, and has learned about medicine by observing her father. Some of the subsequent chapters, however, are told from the perspective of Carlo Guercio, a homosexual Italian man who has decided to join the Italian army which has been raised under the rule of Benito Mussolini during World War II.