The Red Violin

Movie Information

The Hendersonville Film Society will show The Red Violin at 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 23, in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community, 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville. (From Asheville, take I-26 to U.S. 64 West, turn right at the third light onto Thompson Street. Follow to the Lake Point Landing entrance and park in the lot on the left.)
Score:
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Genre: Musical Biopic
Director: François Girard
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Flemyng, Greta Scacchi, Colm Feore
Rated: R

The Red Violin (1998) played briefly in this area in 2004 (Click here for a more in-depth review), and it’s a delight to see that the Hendersonville Film Society has brought this rather special—and visually striking—film back. This film is a kind of throwback to the old “portmanteau” film—a work containing several stories that are tied together by a single object. In Paramount’s all-star 1932 If I Had a Million, it was a dying industrialist giving away checks for a million dollars to strangers. In Julien Duvivier’s Tales of Manhattan (1942), the story followed the life of a dress coat as it passed from person to person. Here, of course, we have the 300-year history of the violin of the title—from its creation to its present status as an item up for auction. It’s not quite perfect, but overall it may be the most successful film of its type ever made.

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About Ken Hanke
Head film critic for Mountain Xpress from December 2000 until his death in June 2016. Author of books "Ken Russell's Films," "Charlie Chan at the Movies," "A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series," "Tim Burton: An Unauthorized Biography of the Filmmaker."

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