Candide

Stephen Marino

Lit and Writing/ Hughes

10/10/05

This film must be made so the people of the next generation can hear what Voltaire has to say. They must realize this book was a great work. In my eyes this book depicted things I've never heard or could believe. I want to make the images that this book made me visualize in my head come a reality. Once you read the chapter on the Bulgarian's brutal attack on Candide and the chapter on the Old Woman's Story, you would be very interested in seeing this movie.

In the scene where Candide is captured by Bulgarian soldiers and is sentenced to death by ten bullets to the brain or sixty floggings by the entire regime, Candide chooses flogging. Since he chose to be flogged, you can just picture this scene where his arms and legs to a stationary object bind Candide and the entire army is lined up to give him floggings. To me this event in the book should be reproduced into a visual medium. The motion and movement of it will just extend the meaning and seriousness of these actions. Even though it would be one of the most violent scenes in the film, it would surely be powerful and amazing to see. Violent scenes are the most popular with audiences these days, so the audience would be interested and intrigued in this one. That is not the reason I want to make this a motion picture. The reason why Candide should become a feature film is that it has a message that I want to show the world. The message of the story is that there is suffering all around you. Complete happiness is unattainable. So this is why I want to portray Candide in the sense of a man who has been suffering. He has been suffering from love, suffering from pain, and suffering from loss.

Another scene that started the thought of directing a film like this would have to be the scene where the Old Woman tells her story of how she has had it harder than the two lovers; Candide and Cunйgonde. The Old Woman story is far more violent than Candide's run in with the Bulgarians.