The Devil's Violinist

He is a very poor actor. His acting in this film was exact the opposite of his natural talent playing with his violin, maybe the worst ever actor I've ever seen so far. This film was also doomed and suffered from a very bad screenplay at the very beginning. The only thing that was so out of the world in this film was his crazy talent with the violin. You should watch and enjoy what he did in this film with his music but not his acting which in fact, was just terrible.

We did not hold out much hope for this after reading the reviews. Gratefully, the reviews, as they are quite often, were, in my opinion, wrong. It is beyond me how these negative reviews make it past the smell test.

The performance of the music was as visually captivating as it was sonically beautiful. The acting was more than passable and the direction was as good as any.

Anyone with slightest knowledge of Paganini, or anyone who bothered to even look up his name on wikipedia, would understand that this movie summarized his life with artistic license. The story itself was a composite of real events, failures and triumphs.

In short, if critics loved Amadeus ( truly pitiful depiction of reality with hyperbolic acting antics throughout) and hate this movie, then I will never fathom their trade.

To cop to another reviewer's judgement of me as a "pinhead" I loved this movie because: 1. I had never heard of David Garret and became more mesmerised by his violin playing the longer the movie lasted. 2. Mr. Garrett does not deserve an Oscar for his acting abilities but he deserves my praise and much praise from others for his musical performances in the movie. 3. I was deeply moved and inspired by his abilities to make the violin sing to me. 4. I know the movie is not a definitive historical work but it paints a broad enough brush for non-experts like to enjoy a long lasting "buzz" from the dazzling violin performance of Mr. Garrett.

In fact I spent some time on YouTube enjoying several other performances of Mr. Garrett. So this "pinhead" is now a die hard fan of the movie, Mr. Garrett and his supporting cast. I appreciate all of the hard work and effort that the writers, producers, directors and performers put into this lovely work.

This "pinhead" can appreciate criticism of the movie but the bitter, vitriol and ad hominem attack upon the people who worked hard to create is way overkill. The Devil's Violinist is not perfect but it certainly is "good enough."

beautiful decor and costumes, nice story and flavor of atmosphere, the old Faust pact and rock star motifs mixed . the problem is that all that pieces are not really enough. because Paganini is more than a legend and that movie use, in fact, only its shadow. because the golden images, the mixture of old and pretty ingredients who can reminds Farinelli or Amadeus are only for decoration not for be roots of an authentic , convincing story. it is a beautiful movie. but only aesthetic and , unfortunately, not at whole. and for not blame the team behind it - the honest good intentions are obvious - , it is important to choose the inspired parts - the music, the presence of Helmut Berger, the work of Jared Harris to save appearances. but , with little more courage and different angle about Paganini trajectory, it could be really an interesting movie. despite the ambition of makers, it is only a promise using the shadow of a legend.

The film is good even if i ido not considered a true version of Paganini's life. I know it is not a documentary but it could have been done more.

I appreciate the effort to show real characters like Paganini's son and father but otherwise it is very fictional and there was no real need for it because his life was already a novel.

From unbridled success to accusations of a pact with the devil there was a lot to tell. In a way they tried with the figure of Urbani one of the most successful and enigmatic characters in the film but otherwise I didn't see much.

They recounted one episode of his life (the London concert) while the rest were shown in a few scenes as if they were in a hurry to finish the film.