Captain Corelli’s Mandolin5

5th proposal

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Here a trailer of the film with Penelope Cruz and Nicolas Cage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRoRCptl8z0

Below you can read a short summary and fill the following words(prepositions and verbs) into the gaps:

by      in      by      in      of      of      of      on

PastCorelli’s Mandolin is a 1993 beautiful novel written b__________(1) Louis de Bernières, which takes place o__________(2) the island of Kefalonia during the Italian and German occupation o__________(3) World War II. The main characters are Antonio Corelli, an Italian captain, and Pelagia, the daughter o__________(4) the local physician, Dr. Iannis. An important event i__________(5) the novel is the massacre o__________(6) Italian troops b__________(7) the Germans i__________(8) September 1943.

viewed      carries      is      follow      tarnished      is      having      killing      portrays      committing      engages      takes
De Bernières __________(1) an ambiguous attitude toward heroism and villainy in the novel: many of the characters, despite __________(2) atrocities, are __________(3) as human victims of bad circumstances. For example, the character Günter Weber __________(4) a great degree of sympathy from the writer, even though he fully __________(5) with the Nazi ideology and __________(6) guilty of taking part in the __________(7) of an entire Italian regiment. Despite __________(8) become friends with many of the men, he must __________(9) orders. Similarly, Mandras __________(10) guilty of murder, torture and rape, yet the author __________(11) him sympathetically: “just another life __________(12)… by war.”

This story blends, comedy, action, tragedy, cheerfulness, romance, homosexuality, love and, for me, above all  language confusion.

The language is therefore a real challenge because throughout the story the characters seem to make a real potpourri of it. This is probably due to the fact that Kefalonia had been occupied for 600 years by the Italians, with a twenty-year Turkish interlude ,the Napoleonic presence and the heavy British influence certainly contributed to this and were also the reason why the people on the island saw each other as aliens.