The Devil's Violinist

Seen at the wonderful Roxy Cinema in Nowra, NSW, Australia

Bea says: Cecil and I both like classical music so we thought this film, about Paganini - who neither of us knew very well - would be a good Sunday afternoon diversion.

The film's title and one its storylines focuses on the fact that Paganini was reputed to be in some kind of contract with the devil in order to play the violin and compose as he did (his music and playing were way ahead of his time, although the information on Wikipedia was better on this than that contained in the film actually!)

Enter the dark, cloaked and bearded figure of Urbani, who "manages" Paganini, and in fact reminded me a lot of the stories of Elvis' manager "The Colonel", with addictions to drugs (opium), gambling and women blighting Paganini's life until he meets the daughter of an English musician and tries to clean up his act. Urbani foils the plot, and the two go their separate ways, and (spoiler alert), Paganini dies young from illness and addiction, and Urbani confusingly states that he is not the devil, just one of his workers....

A diverting enough story indeed, but I rather felt the film couldn't quite decide whether it was going to focus on the devil's contract part of the story, or the love story, and ended up doing neither particularly well.  It might have been better if there had been some stronger performances, and a better script, or if perhaps less had ended up on the cutting room floor (although it certainly did not need to be any longer).

Best part of it?  Fantastic costumes and beautiful music!
**

Cecil says: The trouble I had with this film was that I didn't really warm to or relate to any of the characters in it, and as Bea suggests, the plot and script were not strong enough to draw me in.

I was convinced throughout that two of the main actors, playing Urbani and the Times journalist, were familiar to me and that I'd seen them in some TV soap like Eastenders. It took s a search of their respective careers to reveal that Jared Harris was of course the English partner in Mad Men, so an interesting previous role, whereas Joely Richardson has been in a lot of things, but none of them appears to have been starring in Eastenders.

But there's something about the fact that this distracted me through the film that goes to show how little I was involved with what was going on. Sure, the music was beautiful, but the Paganini character far from attractive and basically a pain in the bum; his own attraction for the young English daughter of his host was also a mystery: she was pleasant enough but didn't come across as someone you'd fall madly, deeply in love with.

**.5