The Legend of 1900

The Legend of 1900 (La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano) is a 1998 film directed by the Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore inspired by a theater monologue, Novecento (Nine Hundred) by Alessandro Baricco.

Shortly after the Second World War, Max Tonney (Pruitt Taylor Vince), a jazz musician enters a secondhand music shop just before the closing time to sell his Conn trumpet. He is broke and badly in need of money. Clearly torn at parting from his prized possession, he asks to play it one last time. The shopkeeper recognizes the tune from a broken record matrix he found inside a recently acquired secondhand piano from a cruise ship that served as a hospital ship in WWII and now slated for demolition. While the record is playing and Max begins to tell the story of 1900.

On the 1st of January in 1900, Danny Boodmann (Bill Nunn), the mechanic of the transatlantic liner Virginian bound for America, finds an abandoned baby in a box on board the ship. He decides to keep him and name the boy Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900 (a combination of his own name, an advertisement found on the box and the year he born). Everyone call him by his nickname, 1900, the boy grows up and raises in the engine rooms hiding from the ship's officers until Danny's death in an accident. 1900, at his eight is forced to survive aboard on the ship as an orphan and for many years, he travels back and forth across the Atlantic. In 1927, 1900 (Tim Roth) a charming, iconoclastic young man befriends with Max who plays trumpet and together they join in the ship's orchestra. Increasingly lured by the sound of the piano in the first-class ballroom, 1900 eventually became a gifted pianist. He soon becomes a virtuoso whose reputation spreads beyond the confines of the ship. Even the famous jazz piano player, Jelly Roll Morton (Clarence Williams III) of New Orleans jazz fame gets on board for a challenge with him to a piano duel.

With all his life living on the ship, Max has encouraged 1900 to go on dry land but he never leaves the ship. Apparently, the outside world is too "big" for his imagination and he rather stays current in it. Max leaves the ship's orchestra in 1933.

Back to the mid-1940s, SS Virginian is scheduled to be scuttled and sunk far offshore. Max who believes that 1900 is still on the ship and attempts to convince him to leave the ship. But he is too daunted by the size of the world and feeling that his fate is tied to the ship, 1900 cannot bring himself to leave the only home he has known.

The film is not based on true story but the character acted by Clarence Williams III was real. Jerry Roll Morton (October 20, 1890 - July 10, 1941) who claimed to have invented jazz outright in 1902, at the age of fourteen, he began working as a piano player in a brothel and in 2008, he was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

The Legend of 1900 is one of the best film with glorious music, beautiful cinematography and a terrific jazz piano duel that shouldn't be missed.

Movie Trailer: