The red violin

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Movie
German title The red violin
Original title The red violin
Country of production Canada , Italy , UK
original language French , English
Publishing year 1998
length 125 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director François Girard
script Don McKellar ,
François Girard
production Niv Fichman
music John Corigliano ,
André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry (additional music)
camera Alain Dostie
cut Gaétan Huot
occupation

The red violin (English title: The Red Violin , French title: Le Violon rouge ) is a film drama directed by François Girard from 1998 . The film music by John Corigliano won an award at the 2000 Academy Awards. The episode film tells the eventful, often tragic story of a violin and its owners, which it casts under a magical spell, spanning centuries .

action

An auctioneer in Montreal is auctioning various string instruments , including a Stradivarius . The highlight of the auction comes last, it is the so-called red violin .

In flashbacks we see the creation and the life of the said musical instrument. The Italian master violin maker Nicolo Bussotti from Cremona built his masterpiece in 1681. His wife Anna is meanwhile heavily pregnant and suspects bad things. She asks the servant Cesca, who reads the future from the cards . She predicts a long life and a long journey for her, but Anna dies in childbirth, as does the newborn. Her husband is deeply shaken, he mixes the blood of his beloved wife in the lacquer and uses it to color his violin - his last work - red.

Over a hundred years later, the orphan Kaspar Weiss conjured up beautiful tones from the instrument in a monastery. He is brought to Vienna by Georges Poussin to further his education. But the boy prodigy dies of excitement at an important audition because he has a weak heart. The deceased is brought back to the monastery and buried there. The violin is buried with him, but passing gypsies plunder the grave, steal the instrument and play the violin as traveling musicians. Later the gypsy tribe and with them the violin came to England.

Many decades later, Lord Frederick Pope of Oxford bought them from the Gypsies when they were encamped on his land. The ingenious musical genius plays his own compositions as if possessed. His relationship with the instrument is just as sensual and erotic as that with his lover Victoria. But she leaves him to travel to Russia . When she returns, Pope surprises her while making love with another woman. In anger, the jealous woman shoots the violin, which she blames for the seduction, and leaves Pope. He regrets his infidelity and announces his imminent suicide.

The violin, damaged at the neck, is repaired and, together with Pope's former Chinese servant, who took the instrument after Pope's death, came to Shanghai at the beginning of the 20th century and from a second-hand dealer in the 1930s into the hands of a wealthy Chinese woman. The cultural revolution raged in communist China in the mid-1960s . Western music and culture are frowned upon. Therefore, Xiang Peis, who got the violin from her mother, gives the instrument to the music teacher Chou Yuan. Thirty years later, Chou Yuan is found dead in his attic. Next to him, the police find a rich collection of violins, including the red violin , which has since been severely damaged .

The antique violins found in China are to be auctioned by an auction house in Montreal, Canada. The American expert Charles Morritz examines the goods. His assumption is confirmed, and he can prove the authenticity of the red violin, steeped in history, by examining a paint sample . He is fascinated by its perfect sound and, like previous owners, is put under a magical spell by it. He desperately wants to own it and with the help of an accomplice who distracts the staff, he swaps it unnoticed for a copy (commissioned by Pope many years ago). This will be auctioned for $ 2.4 million to Mr. Ruselsky. Morritz happily returns to his family with the violin.

Anna Bussotti, the unhappy wife of the luthier was destined not fulfilling lives, but they lived in the red violin continue and experienced many vicissitudes and adventures. The violin brought passion and calamity for its owner and brought gifted music into the world.

Reviews

  • The lexicon of international films described the film as "a historical picture sheet that depicts the epochs in an overly illustrative and superficial manner and prefers its opulent furnishings to a meaningful dramaturgy."
  • Roger Ebert certified the film in the Chicago Sun-Times as "intelligence and appeal" and a "suspenseful ending".

Awards (selection)

Background information

The film was shot in China, Cremona, Montreal, Oxford, Pizzighettone (near Cremona), Sand in Taufers and Vienna. The budget was about $ 10 million. The film opened on September 10, 1998 at the Toronto International Film Festival . It was first seen in Germany on November 26, 1998. German-language VHS video cassettes and DVDs were released.

Joshua Bell played the original music by John Corigliano as a violin soloist.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The red violin. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ^ Review by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, June 18, 1999