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Captain Corelli's Mandolin
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Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) More at IMDbPro »

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Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) -- When a fisherman leaves to fight with the Greek army during WWII, his fiancee falls in love with the local Italian commander.

Overview

User Rating:
5.7/10   12,921 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 9% in popularity this week. See rank & trends on IMDbPro.
Director:
John Madden
Writers:
Shawn Slovo (screenplay)
Louis de Bernières (novel)
Contact:
View company contact information for Captain Corelli's Mandolin on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
17 August 2001 (USA) more
Genre:
Drama | Music | Romance | War more
Plot:
When a fisherman leaves to fight with the Greek army during WWII, his fiancee falls in love with the local Italian commander. full summary | full synopsis
Plot Keywords:
more
Awards:
4 nominations more
NewsDesk:
(33 articles)
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User Comments:
Love And War And Occupation more

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Penélope Cruz ... Pelagia

John Hurt ... Dr. Iannis

Christian Bale ... Mandras
Irene Papas ... Drosoula
Gerasimos Skiadaressis ... Mr. Stamatis
Aspasia Kralli ... Mrs. Stamatis
Mihalis Giannatos ... Kokolios
Dimitris Kaberidis ... Father Aresenios (as Dimitris Kamperidis)
Pietro Sarubbi ... Velisarios, The Strongman (as Pedro Sarubbi)
Viki Maragaki ... Eleni, Pelagia's Friend
Joanna-Daria Adraktas ... Young Lemoni
Ira Tavlaridis ... Older Lemoni
Katerina Didaskalou ... Lemoni's Mother
Emilios Chilakis ... Dimitris
Nikos Karathanos ... Spiros
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Create a character page for: ?

Additional Details

Also Known As:
Capitaine Corelli (France)
more
MPAA:
Rated R for some violence, sexuality and language.
Runtime:
131 min
Country:
UK | France | USA
Color:
Color
Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
DTS | Dolby Digital | SDDS
Filming Locations:
Kefallonia island, Greece more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Katie Holmes auditioned for the role of Pelagia. more
Goofs:
Anachronisms: The movie implies that the earthquake that devastated Kefalonia after World War II occurred in 1947. It was actually in 1953. At the end of the credits, the movie is dedicated to the memory of those who died in the post-war earthquake of 1953. The DVD commentary also mentions the correct date. more
Quotes:
Pelagia: Why did you save him? Why didn't you leave him to die?
Mandras: I wanted you to love me again.
[Pulls out 100 letters]
Mandras: In Albania, I made them read every one of these to me... 'Mandras, I love you,' 'Mandras, I want you,' 'Mandras, when are you coming back?' And then one day, a different letter. 'I don't know how to describe my feelings. It's as if I have been waiting a hundred years to hear from you, waiting a hundred years for you to return. Once, my heart was overflowing with love for you, but now all I feel is emptiness. And I think it was all just a pretense, that I never loved you at all.'
more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in "Gilmore Girls: The Road Trip to Harvard (#2.4)" (2001) more
Soundtrack:
Giovinezza more

FAQ

This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.
14 out of 22 people found the following comment useful:-
Love And War And Occupation, 11 August 2002
7/10
Author: sddavis63 (revsdd@gmail.com) from Ontario, Canada

After a somewhat slow start I thought this movie about the Italian occupation of a Greek island during World War II picked up and became a quite enjoyable watch for a couple of hours, from primarily two points of view.

The love triangle is an interesting one and strikes me as believable, because I know it happened in various places under occupation. Penelope Cruz played Pelagia, a young Greek girl engaged to be married to Mandras (Christian Bale). I had questions about the depth of their love from the start, but their future was torn apart when Italy invaded Greece, and Mandras went off to fight. After German intervention, Greece is conquered and the island Pelagia lives on comes under Italian occupation, during which Pelagia meets and begins to fall in love with Captain Corelli (Nicholas Cage.) This, of course, was a dilemma that came to many young women in occupied lands. As they got to know their occupiers, they started to see them not as the enemy but as real people, and sometimes fell in love - often to the disapproval of their neighbours. I just finished reading an interesting book about the German occupation of Britain's Channel Islands in which this was a major issue. Once Mandras returns to the island, Pelagia is torn between them.

The second background issue is the Italian occupation itself, which I thought was quite realistically portrayed. First was the contempt with which the island treated their Italian occupiers. Greece defeated Italy (quite true from a historical perspective) and was really conquered by the Germans. The refusal of the town to surrender to the Italians and instead to insist on surrendering to a German officer struck me as something that could well have happened (and was quite funny in fact. I loved the line, "we would rather surrender to this German's dog than to you Italians.") The portrayal of the Italian troops also struck me as believable. The Italian Army was never enamoured of their German ally, and never enthusiastic about fighting with them. Although Hitler and Mussolini were close friends, their soldiers tended to treat each other with contempt. Here, the Italians are more interested in singing than fighting (which the German troops on the island simply can't understand,) and are ecstatic when Italy makes peace and withdraws from the war - until they discover that this may well make them prisoners of the Germans. It was all quite well done, I thought.

It falters a bit at the end with an all too predictable finish, but still deserves praise.

7/10

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Message Boards

Discuss this movie with other users on IMDb message board for Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)
Recent Posts (updated daily)User
pick a nationality please????? y0839592661
What is the music played during the Festival scenes? simonjarlov1
Why did they bother calling this Captain Corelli's Mandolin? lori-cakes
definition of love? chris9short
About a quote.. Dont know what Dr Iannis meant by it. soccer_freak34
some one has got to have liked the film totally-vexed
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