The Legend of 1900 Review
by "Mark O'Hara" (mwohara AT hotmail DOT com)November 26th, 1999
The Legend of 1900 (1999)
A Film Essay by Mark O'Hara
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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.
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