Escaping from horrible pictures of wartime devastation, he faces a heartless reception by a religious Dutch couple and is rescued from his misery by a generous Anabaptist, who later on gives shelter to Pangloss as well. However, after being banished from the castle as a result of affair with the baron’s daughter, Cunegonde, Candide opens his eyes on a less perfect world than he imagined he was living in.īeing simple-hearted by nature, Candid, exhausted by hunger and cold, easily falls victim of Bulgarian army recruiters and learns his first lessons of human cruelty during the regiment training and the battle with the Abares. As such, Candide is the story of education of its hero, a young and naïve man called Candide, raised in a Westphalian baron’s estate and truly believing his preacher Pangloss that all is for good in this world and things cannot be different from what they are.

Candide can be viewed as “a satire on systems a discussion of the problem of evil a comparison of Utopia and reality a pursuit of the secret of happiness an education…” (Pearson 110). Voltaire’s renowned shrewd outlook and sober judgment found reflection in his famous satire Candide, or Optimism – a book which, met with a scandal immediately after publication, has enjoyed great popularity for centuries due to the vital and burning problems discussed in it. Like this?try these.In the scope of classical literature, the writings of Francois Voltaire occupy a prominent position. The cast is a who's who of the French cinema: Michel Simon is a military man ,who rejoices every time a new war breaks out Daliah Lavi,who already played opposite Cassel in Gance's 'Cyrano et d'Artagnan' is Mademoiselle Cunégonde,Candide's only love ,who is raped after the massacre of her parents and later ends up a harem in Morocco Also featured are Pierre Brasseur,Michel Serrault -then teaming up with Jean Poiret-,Nadia Gray,Louis de Funès (you read well) as a man of the gestapo,Jacqueline Maillan ,Jean Richard and more. The script writers have transposed the action of Voltaire's famous novel into the twentieth century,essentially the forties and the fifties.By doing so ,they did not make it realistic for all that: Carbonneaux's movie remain a fable faithful to the writer's spirit.Do not look for historical accuracy here: it's a mad story where the writers found good equivalents of the horrors depicted by Voltaire (particularly the horror of war).It does not always works ,but when it works,the lines are really funny and Jean-Pierre Cassel is ideally cast as Candide who ,in the worst situations, always shares the philosophy of his master Pangloss 'everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds' ,perfect paraphrase of 'it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good' or 'every cloud has a silver lining'.

Candide and optimism