Il était une fois Jean-Sébastien Bach

This film about one of the classical music world's genuine greats is a mostly factually accurate re telling of J S Bach's life starting at age ten . It hits most of the highlights and saddest lows of Bach's painful and yet interesting life with an attempt , usually successful , of being not only truthful but also modest . It is in stark contrast to other films about classical musical geniuses like Amadeus , which may be to some more entertaining , but also have multiple scenes that are , as far as historians know , pure fiction . Il etait une fois Jean Sebastien Bach is in French but the subtitles are both easy to read because of their large size print , and accurate translations into English . The music is wonderful ! Every single piece , as befits an entire film about one of the greatest classical music composers ever , is a J S Bach composition . Several of the locations , in the movie , are even the original spots that J S Bach himself was at . Another honest attempt by this filmmaker to be truthful and accurate to the facts of Bach's life . If you want to learn about J S Bach's life , joys and woes and , of course his wonderful music this film will give you that . Despite the criticisms of some reviewers it is a solid , admittedly not spectacular , but good film . Agreed none of the performances are award worthy but again it tells his story accurately and gives quality renditions of Bach's music . It achieves the reasonable if modest , but still worthwhile aims for a film about a musical great - to tell enough of the person's story truthfully that the viewer learns about the person's life and hears some of his music . Few other music composers have as many pieces of their music performed as often every year for over two centuries on different continents as J S Bach and this is a good introduction to the man , his life and a small , but good , sampling of his music .

When I went to see this film, I didn't thought I was going to see a masterpiece, I expected to see a documentary on JS. Bach. Well, I must say I got it.

I found the actors rather bad (except for a few exceptions), Jean Rochefort (whom I do like) is not as convincing as expected, the quality of the image is rather poor (well, do bear in mind it's a small French film), there's nothing special in the filming itself, and if you don't love music you'll get bored very quickly because of long "concert" scenes. Things have been done rather quickly and even though the costumes are good, all efforts to make the spectator move to the XVIIIth century have not been made, we can even see some cars in the background of a scene!

The worst point of this film is music/image synchronization. It's really obvious that actors are not playing the music (except in one or two scenes). Well, I'm a pianist myself so maybe as a non musician you won't notice anything. But when Bach conducts the orchestra and his beating with his arms is not synchronized with the music, I guess even non musicians could get annoyed.

You can't compare this film to others on the same theme (musicians' biographies) such as "Amadeus" or "Immortal Beloved" (that's on Beethoven), those are films while this one is a documentary. After all, if you're interested in Bach's life and too lazy to read a book about it, then you could go and see it.

It does come off, as another reviewer noted, like a high school documentary film. The narration is a bit stultifying. If you want to learn about JS Bach's life, though, you will by watching this movie. The actors do the best they can, but the format could have been better--the narrator/scene/narrator/scene exposition gets a bit plodding after a while.

Costumes? Superb. Sets? Wonderful. With the exception of one actress whose makeup looks like she went to Lancome to get her face painted, and to Sassoon for her hair to be styled, the rest of the group look half-way believable.

There's enough of JS Bach's music peppered throughout the film that you'll get a nice helping of it, so that's a plus, too.

What's unfortunate, though, is that they clearly didn't spare the horses in terms of expense when it came to visual and auditory details...it's just a shame that the exposition of the story was so, well, lame.

Bottom line: Like Bach? Your time won't be wasted watching this film. If you're not madly in love with the guy and his music, though, this might not give you the "period drama" fix you seek.

J.S. Bach is my favorite composer and this movie explored his life in a way I never took the time to do myself.

I ran into this movie by accident and it was a pleasant surprise.

I now have a great appreciation of the man behind the music.

It also gives a hint of what it was like for people of his time - a nice period piece.

For example: I didn't even know he had married.

Another example: I didn't know he was incarcerated. Hmm... ex con? That's not really descriptive of his incarceration, but a fun twist on this footnote!

It's a must see for any J.S. Bach fan!

What we have is a docudrama about Bach in French with narration in English, and English subtitles. I found the film to be interesting enough and depicts Bach's world rather well. I really felt transported back to the 18th century. The film sticks to the facts like a good documentary would. No Hollywood crap in this story, which may be why people disliked it, they perhaps want a big budget Hollywood drama about Bach, not a docudrama style of film. Maybe the fact its foreign throws people off? I don't know, I watch so many foreign films they seem normal to me.

There's so much of Bach's music in this film its great. How any Bach fan could not appreciate this film is beyond me, and the acting is fine. I equate bad films with being something I can picture on MST3K, this isn't even close to the same ballpark as those types of films. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but if your a true Bach fan don't let these bad reviews steer you away from this film. Ultimately I rank films by the fact of would i ever want watch it again? And in the case of this film I would.