Candide ou l'optimisme au XXe siècle
Candide ou l'Optimisme du XXe siècle () is a 1960 French comedy drama film directed by Norbert Carbonnaux and written by Carbonnaux and Albert Simonin. It stars Jean-Pierre Cassel as Candide, Pierre Brasseur as Pangloss, Louis de Funès as the officer of the Gestapo, and Daliah Lavi as Cunégonde. The film was released under the titles "Candide" (alternative French title; USA), "Candide oder der Optimismus im 20. Jahrhundert" (West Germany), "Candide, avagy a XX. század optimizmusa" (Hungary), and "Kandyd czyli optymizm XX wieku" (Poland). Plot. The film is a 20th-century adaptation of  Voltaire's 1759 social satire novel "Candide, ou l'Optimisme". Set in the World War II-era, it follows the adventures of Candide, an orphaned Westphalian brought up in a baron's chalet. He falls in love with the baron's daughter, Cunégonde, and is thrown out of the house when the baron discovers them kissing. When war breaks out in 1939, Candide is drafted and then captured by the Nazis, but escapes and joins the International Red Cross. Candide's improbable adventures take him into a concentration camp to rescue his tutor, Pangloss; then he is off to South America  (where he endures a series of revolutions), Borneo (where he is imprisoned by a primitive tribe), Moscow (where he accidentally foments a missile crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States), and New York (where he gets mixed up in a racial clash). Finally, back in France, he retires to a country house with Cunégonde, Pangloss, and a mysterious lady who saved him from a firing squad, and settles down to write his memoirs. Other film treatments. In 1947 Marcel Carné intended to create a film based on Voltaire's 1759 satire "Candide", but production was abandoned. The 1986  film "Live from Lincoln Center: Candide" was also based on the same novel.