[WATCHED: December 29, 2014] The Legend of 1900
After really enjoying Novocento, I wanted to see what they would do with a film of the book. I was especially curious how they took the sixty-some page monologue and turned it into a 2 hour film.
The film was written by Giuseppe Tornatore who directed Cinema Paradiso. It was filmed entirely in Italy (which explains how they got the New York scenes to look so old world) and yet it was written entirely in English (apparently before Novocento was translated). It starred Tim Roth as Nineteenhundred (not Novocento, like in the book) and a bunch of other people I didn’t know.
The movie was, as I say, written by Tornatore, based on the book. He kept virtually the entire book the same for the movie. But he added a bookend section to give the narrator someone to talk to. And this is how the film was stretched out to two hours.
The new parts are certainly interesting. Max, Nineteenhundred’s only real friend and fellow shipboard musician, is selling his trumpet at a pawn shop. This part confused me because the pawn shop owner is British, but I thought the ship was docked in New York. But whatever. He plays his trumpet one last time and the melody he plays is the same one that the shop keeper then plays on a phonograph.
It turns out that he found that record in the guts of a piano that came off of the ship in the dock. Max says he knows who the piano player is, but decides to keep it secret. But when the owner says that the ship is in dry dock and they are panning to blow it up, Max freaks out and runs to the ship.
Most of the story is told in flashback. And all of the material aboard ship is taken straight from the book.
There were two scenes I really wanted to see: when Nineteenhundred is waltzing with the ship on the piano (and it was filmed masterfully) and the duel with Jelly Roll Morton (which was also done wonderfully).
There was an extra scene that I didn’t recognize from the book in which he stares at a beautiful woman and then speaks to her as she leaves the ship. I say didn’t recognize because I also don’t believe that the recording of the disc was in the book. And also because there was a huge moment in the film that I assumed was not in the book, but as I double checked I saw that it was. Somehow I missed the one paragraph in which Baricco casually mentions that the ship is to blown up (the movie is much more dramatic about that fact). So this explains why I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening at the end of the book (never force yourself to finish a book if you’re tired, even if you are really enjoying it).
The movie was moving and funny. And yet it was also very sad at one point and kind of sad but sorta not at the end (I won’t give the ending away). But the music is simply gorgeous (Ennio Morricone for the soundtrack). I enjoyed the film quite a lot, an I’m glad it made me go back and clarify the end of the book.
It’s quite a good movie and I wonder why I was utterly unfamiliar with it.
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