Son of Michael Powell's 1948 The Red Shoes with a new coat of red paint

Rating: Null/10 (7 September 1999)

The Red Violin has trouble deciding whether it is a costume picture or an art movie. The film traces the history of a rare violin from its birthplace in 1681 Italy. The instrument is headed for a 1998 auction house to be sold. Enter expert Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson knows rare violins. He recognizes this piece as one of a kind. Its not a Stradivarius. Its even more refined, a handmade instrument from an old Italian craftsman. Jackson is not the only one who sees through the plain trappings of the violin. A young scientist who measures the richness of fiddle acoustics, is also onto the red violin. The young man is actor Keith Gordon the same young skeptic who doubts Rodney Dangerfield's attempts at getting an education in the 1986 film Back to School. The Red violin is so famous there are knock-offs and copies circulating in the rare violin marketplace.
As I mentioned, the first four historic scenarios through which the vintage violin travels are costume pieces. They are also choppy and differ in detail, authenticity and tone from the last auction house episode. On top of that the auction mystery is so richly separate in tone and character from other sequences, it is as if separate filmmakers were working here.
One sequence features a Viennese landowner who retrieves the instrument from a band of gypsies who are trespassing on his property. The aristocrat is a true eccentric. The music he plays on the Red Violin is extraordinary. His love affair with absurd European Duchess Greta Schacchi is so unnecessary, the episode plays like farce.
Another episode takes us to China in the early 20th century then moves the daughter whose mother buys the pawned violin for her, to China's cultural revolution of the '60s. All old things are now considered reactionary. Violins are instruments which play "decadent western music." The young girl, now grown up, takes flight to save the instrument. This sequence echoes the ridiculous woodenness of the cultural revolution itself. Characters are reduced to counterrevolutionary sloganeering. Its difficult to believe even the Maoists of that period could have cared so much about an off-colored violin.
Scenes from the the first 17th century period when the instrument is made, explain its strange color.
The last sequence is a mystery. It pays off a story that has been difficult to follow. The auction sequences take place in a European Capital, though the actors appear to be Canadians. Fittingly, the actor who actually auctions this fiddle played the title character in Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould. The 1998 auction sequence saves the whole film from being little more than a comic book. Most of the violin music played throughout the films is exquisite and interesting in its variety and range.
Samuel Jackson, Keith Gordon and the many others in the last sequence are superb. The last part redeems the entire film. The screenwriting is fine here as is the camerawork. The color photography, if I have failed to mention it, seems excessively red.