Rothschild's Violin

The year is 1939. All over the USSR, poets and artists, many of them Jewish, are made to "disappear." Benjamin Fleischmann, a talented student at Leningrad's prestigious Conservatory, composes a one-act opera based on Chekhov's story Rothchild's Violin. When Fleischmann dies defending Leningrad, his mentor - the great Dimitri Shostakovich - decides to finish his opera. He creates a masterwork that honors the young man's memory and bears his name. Although it is shot in lush color, Cozarinski's adaptation of the opera is reminiscent of the naturalism of many Yiddish films. Following his wife's death, a shtetl violinist suddenly becomes aware of his own vanity. In a spontaneous gesture, he gives his violin to the poorest man in town, who begins playing delightful, original melodies on an instrument he has never played before. In the film's final part, Stalin's commissars accuse Shostakovich of "rootless cosmopolitanism," a coded term for Jewishness. Risking his safety, he defends his new opera and embraces the Jewish culture that gave it life. 1997 Berlin Film Festival; 1997 Telluride Film Festival.