Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) on Netflix
Italy's army occupies Cephalonia, and Captain Antonio Corelli, a mandolin player, is billeted in Doctor Iannis's house. The doctor's daughter Pelagia is engaged to Mandras, a fisherman at war.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb5.9/1037,635 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes28%
Trailer
Plot summary
Cephalonia, an island in Greece's Ionian group, passes into Italian hands when a large garrison arrives and the inhabitants surrender without a fight. Among the occupying troops is Captain Antonio Corelli of the 33rd Acqui Infantry Division, a cheerful officer who plays the mandolin and drills his battery of soldiers in choral singing rather than marksmanship. Pelagia, the educated and strong-willed daughter of the village doctor, takes offense at him. Her father agrees to lodge the captain in exchange for medical supplies, and the two are thrown together under the same roof. Pelagia is engaged to Mandras, a local fisherman who has joined the Greek army on the mainland. As Corelli settles into village life, he begins to question the war he was sent to wage.
Cast
- Aspasia Krallias Mrs. Stamatis
Show all 20 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Kevin Loader and director Roger Michell did not think a $25 million production would be financed in the United Kingdom, and after sending the script to the US believed Hollywood was put off by large sections of the novel concerning Mussolini, a cat and chapters called L'Omosessuale.
- As Cage was not a musician, he learned how to play a mandolin for the role, and in every scene in which Corelli plays the instrument it is really Cage playing it.
- According to de Bernières, Cage was in a bad mood throughout filming because he was going through a divorce with his then-wife Patricia Arquette, and he would fly back to California every week.
- Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 2 out of 4 and suggested it might have worked better with subtitles, pointing out the absurdity of a scene "where something is said in English pronounced with one accent, and a character asks, What did he say? and he is told -- in English pronounced with another accent."
- The film pays homage to the thousands of Italian soldiers executed at the Massacre of the Acqui Division by German forces in Cephalonia in September 1943, and to the people of Cephalonia who were killed in the 1953 Ionian earthquake.
