Product Description

The dark days of the Depression set the stage for surreal black comedy in this "intoxicating" (Time) musical melodrama from acclaimed director Guy Maddin. When a legless beer baroness (Isabella Rossellini) in Winnipeg announces a contest to find the world's saddest tune, a pint of trouble brews among a fractured family competing for the $25,000 prize. As the disturbing depths of the linksbetween each other, the baroness and an amnesiac nymphomaniac are exposed, one thing becomes clear:It will take more than a pool of alcohol to drown their sorrows!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19512 in DVD
• Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
• Released on: 2004-11-16
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 101 minutes

Amazon.com
Only the mind of Guy Maddin could conjure up The Saddest Music in the World, in which a double-amputee beer baroness invites musicians of all nations to compete in a grand music competition... in Winnipeg. The only thing zanier than the plot is Maddin's style, which makes the film look like a lost artifact from the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari era, a jumble of Expressionist compositions and gauzy focus. It helps if you're already a fan of the director of Careful and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, for this is not Maddin's most cohesive picture. Kids in the Hall stalwart Mark McKinney is a little too arch as a sharpie returning to Manitoba, but Isabella Rossellini is delicious as the "Beer Queen of the Prairie." By the time she straps on a pair of hollow glass legs filled with bubbly lager, you're either delighted by this movie or you've given up. --Robert Horton

From The New Yorker
Another straightforward slice of corporate entertainment from Guy Maddin. Actually, by his standards this new picture really is close to intelligible. Isabella Rossellini, sporting a wig that appears to have been woven from cold egg noodles, plays Lady Port-Huntly, rich but legless, who runs a competition to discover, as the title suggests, the saddest music in the world. One of her former lovers (Mark McKinney) offers to represent America; he also has a drunken father (David Fox) and a pixielike girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros) who is both amnesiac and nymphomaniac-a far from impractical arrangement, when you consider it. The movie, set in Winnipeg in 1933, is shot with Maddin's habitual blend of jumpiness, spookiness, halation, and archaic levels of scratch and grain. The result does not so much flirt with the ridiculous as lie back and let the ridiculous do more or less what it wants, and Maddin aficionados will ask for nothing more. Once again, however, the unconverted may wonder what the fuss is about; when a director's storytelling is as overheated as this, why should the stories themselves have to be so wildly undercooked? -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A rare cinematic treat, visually and aurally
Guy Maddin just gets better and better. In this, his latest film, he's outdone himself. The fusion of content and style is so brilliant, clever, and emotional, the film has to rank as one of the best of 2004 even with the year not yet over.

Set in 1933, "the depths of the Great Depression", the location is Winnipeg, Canada, home of Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rosselini), the astoundingly wealthy beer baroness of Canada, who decides to hold a contest to select the saddest music in the world--for business reasons, of course. Among the entrants are her former lover, Chester Kent (Mark McKinney), his current lover Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros), Chester's estranged brother Roderick (Ross McMillan)--separated from Narcissa, and the men's father, Duncan (Claude Dorge). Duncan represents Canada; Chester, America; and Roderick, Serbia (of all places).

The prize is $25,000, a fortune in those days, so naturally there are entrants from all over the world--among which are Mexico, Siam, and Africa. The music is inspired, but eventually converges on the lilting popular American tune The Song is You, for which there are diverse renditions in the course of the film. The show-stopper is the version by Chester near the end, a big band production that fuses influences, in typical American fashion, from all over the world.

Familial tensions converge with unrequited love, and with the most peculiar prostheses anyone has ever seen--either in real life or on film. Lady Port-Huntly is a double amputee, and he whose reckless mistake resulted in her unfortunate current condition fashions for her a pair of legs that must be seen to be believed.

The entire film is shot using a blue-haze filter, with a faux stereopticon effect that narrows the viewing screen to that resembling what one would see from the early days of film, and with the faintest, subtlest and tiniest of lags in action-speech synchronization that makes this uncannily resonate as a work fusing a 30s setting, a pre-20s style, and a contemporary sensibility that knows how to combine these elements in the first place. This is a truly brilliant--I would even call it genius--approach to filmmaking that noone else in the known world even remotely approaches. Maddin is one of the contemporary masters of cinema and this is the proof.

A Bit of Whimsy and Farce Delivered with Panache!
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD is much more than just director Guy Maddin's exercising his talents. Though the story of a Winnipeg bilateral amputee beer hall baroness Lady Helen Port-Huntley (Isabella Rossellini) staging a world competition for the saddest music may sound a bit silly, watch this film for a competition to beat all competitions, a grand spectacle where a Thai flautist competes with a Mexican Ranchero band, Russians, Chinese, Serbians etc.

Add to this the personal tragedy of Lady Helen facing her lover Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) who watched while his father Dr. Fyodor Kent (David Fox) mistakenly and drunkenly amputated both of her legs after a car accident while Chester's brother Roderick (Ross McMillan) exiles himself to Serbia over the loss of his wife Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros) and child, constantly playing his sad music on his cello!

All this may sound a bit over the top, but it is actually WAY over the top and happily so. Maddin has shot the film primarily in black and white in the just-out-of-focus manner of the earliest of movies (the story, after all, takes place in the Great Depression).

But despite the emphasis on 'artiness', the story is not mere parody or wedge of surrealism: there are many cogent social comments here - enough to keep you thinking. This film may not be for everyone, but for those who enjoy something different, it is highly recommended! Grady Harp, November 2004

A Unique Film From A Rare Talent
If you know that Isabella Rossellini is married to David Lynch, you will have no problem understanding why she chose to star in this film. Director Guy Maddin tells a bizarre story, filmed through a snowy, distorted lens in black and white, making for a truly surreal vision. The story itself is simply about a Baroness in Canada who recrutes musicians from around the world to promote the worlds "saddest" music for a large sum of money. However, instead of gut wrenching sorrowful music, the audience is treated to a unique collage of `cold' characters seeming to come from the 19th century. The cinematography is fantastic, but the characters don't bring much life to the story. They are all stilted, bland inventions plucked straight from a silent film. At best the film is a study in film cinematography and style. There is love, tragedy and all the elements of true cinema, but it never fully evolves. However, the film is an advanced version of what David Lynch might have done if he chose this story, time and place. This film is for the real film buff who will not be disappointed.

The extra featurettes are truly amazing and spark enough interest in what a filmmaker will do to make his dream come true.