The Legend of 1900

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Legend of 1900
Directed by	Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring	Tim Roth
Release date(s)	1998
Running time	160 min
Country	Italy
Language	English

The Legend of 1900 (original title being La Leggenda del Pianista sull'Oceano) is a 1998 film starring Tim Roth, done by the Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It is about a pianist born on an ocean liner in 1900. The pianist, named Danny Boodmann T. D. Lemons Nineteen Hundred by one of the ship's machinists - after himself, the fruit merchant's crate where the baby was found, and the year of his birth - grows up on board the ship and never sets foot on land. Called "1900" for short, the child turns out to be a musical prodigy, which prompts the Captain to allow him to earn his board and keep in exchange for playing a grand piano in the main first class salon.

Years pass until he befriends a jazz musician who, at last, tries to get him to leave the boat when it is about to be sunk.

As the demolition crew does not know 1900 is on it, he eventually does go down with the ship he never left.

[edit] First Scene

A man enters an antique shop for the purpose of pawning a trumpet he's had in his possession for quite some time. After he sells the trumpet, he asks if he can play it one last time, and proceeds to play a piece the shopkeeper recognizes from a broken record master he found inside a secondhand piano he recently acquired and the question comes up as to who had written and played the music. At that, the story of 1900 is related to the shopkeer (and the viewer) in the form of a flashback, and the story takes off from there, with 1900 being found abandoned inside the ship, a mere baby in a handbasket, the crowd of immigrants having already disembarked. After he is rescued by the loving coal shoveler who works down in the engine room, he is raised up on board the ship without contact with anyone other than the crew on the ship.