Rothschild's Violin at Boston Jewish Film Festival

[Judy Fertig <fertig...>]

For those of you who might be able to get tickets to the North Shore
showing of "Rothschild's Violin" at the Boston Jewish Film Festival on
November 12, it's really worth it. It's showing at the Warwick Cinema on
Nov. 12 at 7pm. I have no idea if there are tickets left, but if there are,
then go! I saw the film Sunday evening at Coolidge Corner and it was
magnificent: as a film, musically, and as a statement about Jewish music
and its legacy. 

Explaining the background of the film, I believe (someone correct me if
this is wrong) was Harlow Robinson (??--it's the name in the program
anyway.) He explained the various levels of the film and the music and was
expert about Shostakovich's music. 

The French-made film was about Shostakovich finishing and trying to stage
the opera of one of his students at the Leningrad Conservatory in the late
1930's, one Benjamin Fleischmann, a Jew.  Fleischmann wrote a one-act opera
based on Anton Chekhov's odd 1894 short story "Rothschild's Fiddle" about
Jews in a small town. He finished the basic score of the opera and some
priliminary orchestration, but unfortunately was killed defending Leningrad
during the war. Shostakovich takes up the task to finish his work. Here's
the story in the story, the opera as "imagined" by Shostakovich, based on
Fleischmann's opera:

There is a talented, though melancholy fiddler named Yakov Matveevich who
plays in a small folk band in an isolated small village. But really Yakov's
a coffin-maker in his day job. Unfortunately he's bitter and cruel to
everyone, including his wife and a young flute player everyone calls
"Rothschild" (to mock his extreme poverty). Yakov spends his days
complaining about all the losses in his life until his wife dies. Then he
has a ephiphany of sorts and he decides that he has wasted his life. He
wants to die, but feels the fiddle should live on. He gives his violin (and
his talent is transferred) to Rothschild, a person he has tormented
continuously in the past.

The film is about this opera which is sung in Russian to Fleischmann's
music. It's fascinating to hear the Jewish folk music and Jewish composed
music interwoven with the Russian and the influences of Shostakovich, (who
finished much of the orchestrations.) The music is compelling as well as
the outer story of film director Edgardo Cozarinsky.

The outer story is of war and then Stalinist Russia and the depths of
oppression-- physical, political, mental and psychological. The film
captures some essence of the contradictions of this cruel, hard time
through actual film clips and footage of the era, and through the
re-enacted story of Benjamin Fleischmann and his mentor Dmitri Shostakovich.

In the outer story we hear the works of Shostakovich and other Russian
composers--the giants. We see the struggle of Shostakovich to remain in a
position to compose and be heard in Stalinist Russia, and also to maintain
his inner integrity and true voice. We learn of his committment to his
student and his student's Jewish legacy. 

It's a powerful film. With the first "real photo" footage of Stalin, the
Russian Jewish woman sitting next to me literally shuttered. Powerful
images of Soviet Might and the Russian people's struggles to survive daily
life dot the film as constant reminders of the reality where they were.
There were several moments showing music students in the Conservatory
studying with Shostakovich that were particularly poignant for me and
incredibly visually crafted. The Jewish wedding scenes of the opera portion
of the film were also delightfully done, as was the mixture of humor and
tragedy.

Harlow Robinson calls this film a  "highly individual work of imagination
and poetic vision."