Menuhin in Hollywood

This documentary succeeds to surprise and move much beyond the usual classical biographical film about great musicians. It retells the story of the 'Concert Magic' film made in 1948 by director Paul Gordon. What has become in the meantime routine mainly due to television - great artists filmed in concert - was at that time an innovation. Using cinema means Paul Gordon made the greatest music accessible to remote corners of the world. The film was not a great commercial success, but gathered interest and became in time a viable document about a great artist and his music at the peak of his career.

The 2006 documentary gets Menuhin on screen seeing again the concert in film 50 years later, telling stories of his life during this period, commenting and even criticizing his music. These sequences have first hand documentary value - we go through the life of Menuhin during the war, the period of hope at the end and after the war, the musicians and other people he met. Even when he is telling about controversial moments as his playing in Germany with conductor Furtwaengler or his meeting with Jewish survivors of the death camps, we feel that we deal with a great man, who felt deeply for what he did and believed in his art.

Highly recommended, and not only because for the music.