Rothschild's Violin

Edgardo Cozarinsky, 1997 (98 mins, Cert. PG)

In 1944, during the Nazi siege of Lenningrad, Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich completed an opera started by a former pupil who had been killed in action. The piece was based on a short story by Chekhov about a Jewish musician who gives away his violin. Shostakovich found it impossible to get the opera staged (Soviet authorities were unsympathetic to anything Jewish), but it was eventually presented in 1968 - and banned the next day. Edgardo Cozarinsky's exhilarating Rothschild's Violin mixes drama, amazing documentary footage and the composer's sublime music to tell the story of an artist struggling against the constraints of his day.
(Barbican publicity)

A passably interesting biopic collapses under the leaden weight of a performance of the unbearably tedious "opera" of the title which forms the centrepiece of the film and which is not helped by apalling sound quality (in spite of being recorded in 1995). Regardless of the extra-musical motivation behind Shostakovich's orchestration of his pupil's piece, the "opera" is grindingly dull and seems to drag on for ever. This heavily overshadows the rest of the film, which frames the performance of the "opera" with a clever mix of drama and documentary footage presenting the familiar story of Shostakovich's struggles to reconcile his musical conscience to the demands of the Soviet system. A great shame, but the tedium far outweighs the rest. A dud.
(Steve Fagg)

Seen: Monday, 23rd February, 1998 (Barbican 1)