The origin of this remarkable story is a novel by Alexander Dumas different from all his other novels, because it's not really a novel but something of a documentary and analysis of the phenomenon of telepathy. As he could not get all the facts of the story, his account is rather fragmentary and more like a sketch than a real novel, but the basics are there, and the main phenomenon is the red thread of the issue. Out of this fragment of a novel, the Italians have created a comprehensive operatic drama with many important characters, each playing some important role, and of course the story of Alexander Dumas fragment is completely replaced by a grand opera with an international cast - Geoffrey Horne, Valérie Lagrange, Gérard Barray, Jean Servais, and Valérie Lagrange is even singing - in English! The script made into a considerable harvest of intrigues out of a bean fragment is a masterpiece in itself, and in Italy this film is considered a classic, while few outside Italy have learned to appreciate its credits - almost like you have to love Italian opera in order to see its values. As always in Italian films, the acting is superb and convincing enough all the way, and to frame the dramatic story, they have found all the most romantic spots of Corsica and turned the film into a great romantic epic of love and death, blood and tears, false identities and established social positions based on lies, and so forth. The case of the twins standing in telepathic contact throughout their lives is the main theme and cannot be explained away, and that's what fascinated Alexander Dumas. He often engaged in occult subjects and tried to penetrate them thoroughly at length, and this was one of them, rather a natural phenomenon than anything occult or supernatural, but the more remarkable for being a fact.
Review of The Corsican Brothers
