The Red Violin

Francois Girard directed this drama tracing the history of a musical instrument through five countries and three centuries. In 1681, to keep the spirit of his wife alive, an Italian paints the violin with a red varnish made from her blood. It is later found in the Austrian Alps when a prodigy gives ...more

A fascinating and intensely romantic film on the universality of the hunger for beauty, Francois Girard's film displays a taste for novel structures evinced in his previous work 32 Films About Glenn Gould. Using an auction in contemporary Montréal as a framing device, the film traces the path of the instrument from its creation in 17th century Cremona across the continents, as it touches the lives of a wildly diverse group of owners, not unlike Max Ophuls' La Ronde or Anthony Mann's Winchester ...more