Guest Author - Peggy Maddox

Director: François Girard

Watching The Red Violin without subtitles is a fascinating experience in communication.

For example, the credits are preceded by a scene in which an apprentice violin maker gets a dressing down for imperfect work. The dialogue is in Italian, which I do not understand, but the meaning of what is happening is perfectly clear.

This multi-lingual film revolves around a violin made in 17th century Cremona, Italy and auctioned in 21st century Montréal, Canada.

The Red Violin was filmed on locations in five countries: Canada, Austria, England, Italy, and China. Actors interact in six languages: Italian, English, German, French, and Mandarin Chinese. It required an enormous staff of casting directors, make-up artists, costumers, and all the other necessary behind-the-scenes personnel to produce.

So much effort and expense should have produced a masterpiece.

Amadaeus (1984) is a masterpiece. The Red Violin is a movie with some interesting aspects.

The Red Violin received an Oscar for Best Music for the original score by John Corigliano. The numerous violin solos are played by Joshua Bell, a virtuoso who began violin at the age of five and made his Carnegie Hall debut at the age of 17 or 18.

The film is presented as a frame story: the auctioning of a collection of violins. Scenes from previous historical periods are interspersed with scenes relating to the auction.

The only name in the cast likely to be recognized by most Americans is that of Samuel L. Jackson who plays a violin appraiser. He's brought in prior to the auction to certify and evaluate the instruments so that the auction house can know how much to expect to get for them. I've no experience with the occupation of antique instruments appraiser, but I'd hope the typical practitioner isn't as explosively bad-tempered and unscrupulous as the character portrayed by Jackson.

The first scenes show the origin of the violin of the title. We see it made by Nicolo Bussotti who is making this particular violin for his unborn child. It is the last violin that he makes and is therefore very valuable in the 21st century.

We are shown the violin maker applying an unusually red varnish to the unpainted instrument. (I may have missed a scene, but I didn't notice him first apply the thick mineral-based "ground" that 17th century violin makers applied before the top coat.)

Next time that we see the violin is a century later. It has come into the possession of an Austrian monastery where the monks teach music to orphans. Their best student, Kaspar Weiss, played angelically by Christoph Koncz, is permitted to play it.

Each possessor of the violin is succeeded by the next as the centuries pass.

The little boy is followed by an English satyr, Frederick Pope. I use the word satyr as the male equivalent of nymphomaniac. (Isn't it odd how everyone knows the word that applies to a woman who has an excessive sex drive, but not the term for men? The condition in men is called satyriasis.)

Pope (Jason Flemyng) keeps his audience waiting while he bangs his novelist girlfriend Victoria Byrd (Greta Scacchi) in the dressing room. He even plays the violin while entertaining naked women in the luxurious bedroom of his stately home.

After Pope, the violin enters the possession of his Chinese manservant who takes it to Shanghai where he pawns it. It passes into the hands of little girl, Xiang Pei who quickly grows up to be played by Sylvia Chang. China is in the throes of the Cultural Revolution led by Chairman Mao. Anything to do with "bourgeois" culture is being devalued and destroyed. We watch as a man is berated and forced to place his violin on a bonfire of vanities. We hear the strings break and for a moment wonder how, if this is the red violin, it could have survived to be auctioned.

Then we see Xiang Pei go to her home and quickly destroy her record collection. The red violin, however, she cannot bear to destroy and takes it to a man who has a collection of them. The entire collection then falls into the hands of the Chinese government. Rather than destroy them as the symbols of capitalism that they are, the government sends them to Montréal to be auctioned.

The Red Violin is entertaining. And, as I said, the multi-lingual aspect of it is fascinating. I've tried to avoid spoilers in this review so that readers who haven't seen the film won't have the surprises ruined if they do decide to watch it. I plan to watch it a second time.