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"The
Legend of 1900" begins in a music shop in
mid-century, viols and and horns hanging down amid the
glorious clutter. Suddenly we are in the boiler room of a
gargantuan steamship, men working their hardest to fill
the maws of the furnaces with coal.
What helps Giuseppe Tornatore's "The Legend of
1900" work its magic are these striking locations,
places we want to be. It all works together to form a
wonderful story, we are made to understand - a story no
less immense than life itself.
What Tornatore did for the cinema in "Cinema
Paradiso," he attempts in "1900" to do for
music. To make his job more awesome he casts it in the
mold of a bold time, naming his very protagonist for the
new century. This boy, you see, is the son of immigrants
who abandoned him in the ship that carried them to the
New World. Found by an African-American engineer (played
by Bill Nunn), the orphan grows up with the crew as his
family, hiding in the hold to avoid discovery by any
social agencies. Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900, the
first two monikers after his only father, soon begins to
explore above-decks. There's a quite amusing scene in
which he's caught playing a grand piano in the ship's
ballroom, in the dead of night. Although his talent is
prodigious, he's told what he's doing is against
regulations. Here the kid tells what he thinks of
regulations, the same obscene response he throws at
anything or anyone he doesn't like.
It's right about now that we return to the music shop, as
Max, played by Pruitt Taylor Vince, is the man relating
1900's story to the owner. Max was a close friend of
1900's, a part of the ship's band, though he is now
apparently giving up his trumpet - in fact selling it to
the old Brit who runs the shop. Having drawn out part of
the story with an old record - a master matrix of 1900
playing one of his spur-of-the-moment masterpieces - the
owner is enrapt, and the flashbacks continue.
When Max first joins the band, 1900 is 27 years old, and
has never set foot off the ship. He's like the symbol of
the new baby each New Year's - except he resembles the
new century - tough and sharp, yet somehow intimidated by
his own potential. 1900 becomes a figure larger than
life, a musician with an easy and formidable talent: the
others in the band occasionally ask him not to show them
up. The only problem is his naivete. Since his
abandonment, he has never touched dry land, and has no
real idea of how to go about the business of living on
it. When he glimpses a girl who is watching him make the
recording aboard the ship, 1900 is smitten. Will there be
a romance? Will Max even talk his sheltered friend into
taking the frightening descent down the gangplank?
The answer to these questions does not come without
difficulty. In fact the ending, as much as it functions
as an answer, is too slow and overwrought with personal
philosophy. Tornatore should have cut a pregnant pause or
two. But oh, what comes before it - this is the stuff of
a great movie.
We see inventive camera shots, some playful ones showing
1900's hands on the keyboard in multiples: the man plays
so fast that we hallucinate extra sets of hands.
Reflections of hands and eyes abound, and one shot shows
the phantasmagoric world of the rich as they dance behind
the windows that separate them from the souls in second
class and steerage. Tornatore shows he is a visionary
director who knows how to exploit fully the medium in
which he works.
The language of early-century steamships is something we
are familiar with, thanks to "Titanic." In
turns claustrophobic and expansive, the
"Virginian" is a wonderful microcosm, a jumping
off point for hundreds of thousands of immigrants. The
vessel serves as a character herself, a place where both
death and life abound.
Of course music plays another important role. Ennio
Morricone wrote the score, including some difficult
hybrids of tunes that show off traits of ragtime, jazz
and atonal modern - best summed up by one character's
comment (though it's about Max's spirited trumpet),
"When you can't tell what it is, it's JAZZ!"
What's most remarkable is how the script ties in music
and narrative. The motif of storytelling operates on so
many levels in this film that it's impossible not to pick
up the thread of one without following the trail of the
other. When Max asks his friend, "What the hell do
you think about when you're playing?" we begin to
understand that 1900 does out-of-ship composition: he
dreams of being in distant cities and wallowing in the
beauty of natural land masses. Music, for him, is a way
of telling the most personal tale possible, a
free-associative fugue. We feel pity for his plight, but
1900's self-pity never lasts long. Soon he's the same
superman of the piano. In a gutsy tour-de-force, 1900
reluctantly engages in a duel with the so-called inventor
of jazz, Jelly Roll Morton (Clarence Williams III). The
way Morton is portrayed, even his mother would not like
him. A combination of a twentieth-century personality
cult and symbol of the brutality of the world outside the
metal womb of the ship, Morton puts a permanent fright
into 1900.
As the title character, Tim Roth has perfect pitch.
Blending innocence and sureness, social awkwardness and
friendly support, Roth is able to convince us for
extended moments that this fable is real. One bit of his
behavior goes over-the-top when he falls hard for the
girl - we need more hints of his intimate pathology to
believe what happens. Otherwise Roth pulls off a
performance that makes us forget him in the roles of so
many smirky tough guys.
I loved Pruitt Taylor Vince as Rub Squeers in the Paul
Newman vehicle "Nobody's Fool." Here he gets to
show off a more realistic talent, a 1920's jazz trumpeter
who wheedles his way into the band of the
"Virginian." Aside from breathing, Vince fakes
his instrument playing well, down to the contortions and
staggers of a hip horn blower. Call him a long shot for a
nomination for best actor in a supporting role. The most
touching bit he plays is the search for his long-lost
best friend. Some time in the 30's, Max left the ship and
got back his land legs. It appears that the
"Virginian" was used as a hospital ship during
the Second World War, during which 1900 stayed aboard and
played on. But now the ship is scheduled for demolition,
and Max is convinced that 1900 has reverted to being a
hermit within the hold. Max's emotions during his search
are telling and fully realized.
Giuseppe Tornatore engages in what might be termed
slow-onset magical realism. It takes a while for his
artistic strokes to gather momentum, to coalesce into
recognizable themes and symbols. But when the jokes and
motifs kick in, the viewer indeed experiences magic.
These moments make you want to whisper to fellow viewers
to confirm the astounding power of subtlety. But like the
best phrases of music, it's best to keep these moments
private, to store them among the few handfuls of
cinematic essence that you carry with you everywhere, to
take out once in a while and cherish like a toy from
childhood.
Related
Links:
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 An
epic story of a man who could do anything... except be
ordinary.
![[Image]](http://members.tripod.com/bhundlan/1900.gif)
![[Image]](http://members.tripod.com/bhundlan/1900_02.gif)
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