The Legend of 1900

The Legend of 1900 (, "The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean") is a 1998 Italian English-language drama film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and starring Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Mélanie Thierry. It was Tornatore's first English-language film. The film is inspired by Novecento, a monologue by Alessandro Baricco. The film was nominated for a variety of awards worldwide, winning several for its soundtrack. Plot The story is told in the midst of the plot as a series of flashbacks. Max Tooney, a musician, enters a secondhand music shop just before closing time, badly in need of money. He has only his old Conn trumpet, which he sells for less than he had hoped. Clearly torn at parting from his prized possession, he asks to play it one last time. The shopkeeper agrees and, as he plays, the vendor immediately recognizes that the music is the same as recorded on a broken record matrix (master disc) he found inside a recently acquired secondhand piano. He asks who the piece is by and Max tells him the story of 1900. 1900 was found abandoned in the first class dining room of the four stacker ocean liner SS Virginian, a baby in a box. Danny Boodman, a coal-man from the boiler room, is determined to raise the boy as his own. He names the boy Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900 (a combination of his own name, an advertisement found on the box and the year he was found) and hides him from the ship's officers. A few years later Danny is killed in a workplace accident; when police officers, called by Captain Smith, come on the ship to pick him up and bring him to the orphanage, 1900 hides and nobody sees him for several days until he reappears playing a piano very well without having ever been taught. 1900 shows a particular gift for music and eventually grows up, joining the ship's orchestra. When Max is hired as a member of the orchestra in 1927, the two musicians become close friends with 1900, who never leaves the vessel. The outside world is too "big" for his imagination at this point. He stays current with outside musical trends as passengers explain new music trends or styles, which he immediately picks up and starts playing for them.