Captain Corelli

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CAPTAIN CORELLI’S MANDOLIN
TEACHERS’ NOTES
This study guide is aimed primarily at students of English Literature, who are studying Louis de Bernières’s novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in the second year of Advanced GCSE studies but will be useful for any students wishing to look at the way in which a novel is adapted for the screen. The guide focuses on the following areas: From novel to screen: Narrative adaptation Characters Representation of nationalities Representation of war Music Language Humour

FILM SYNOPSIS
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin traces a love that begins uneasily between a conscripted officer of the occupying Italian army, Captain Antonio Corelli (Nicolas Cage), and Pelagia, a strong-willed, ambitious young
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It is completely virgin, it produces overwhelming clarity of focus, it has heroic strength and brilliance. It exposes colours in their original prelapsarian state, as though straight from the imagination of God in His youngest days, when He still believed that all was good. The dark green of the pines is unfathomably and retreatingly deep, the ocean viewed from the top of a cliff is platonic in its presentation of azure and turquoise, emerald, viridian, and lapis lazuli. . . Once the eyes have adjusted to the extreme vestal chastity of this light, the light of any other place is miserable and dank by comparison... [pages 6/7]

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What aspects of this description are highlighted in the opening scenes of the film? What filmic techniques are used to achieve this? Consider the type of camera shots we see, how the camera moves, what lighting has been used, what sounds we hear and the speed of the editing - how quickly does the film change from shot to shot? How does the film use landscape to reflect the development of the themes of love and war? How does the settings assist the reading of the story as a) a tale of war b) a tale of love c) a tale of a nation

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CHARACTERS
When adapting an epic novel such as Captain Corelli’s Mandolin for the screen it is important to focus on certain facets of the narrative and character in order to give the story coherence. As a filmmaker John Madden wanted to bring out the full dramatic potential of the
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