The Saddest Music in the World (2004)
82%RT Audience Score: 77%
Awards & Nominations: 6 wins & 7 nominations
Guy Maddin perfectly recreates the look and feel of a 1930s in this bizarre picture
The Saddest Music in the World is a movie that’s as odd as it is entertaining. Guy Maddin’s unique style of filmmaking is on full display here, with a story that’s both darkly comic and delightfully bizarre. The film’s expressionist style and lighting design are a feast for the eyes, and the performances are all top-notch. Sure, it’s not for everyone, but if you’re in the mood for something truly original and offbeat, you can’t go wrong with The Saddest Music in the World. Plus, where else are you going to see a double-amputee beer baroness with glass-encased, beer-filled legs?
Production Company(ies)
Strong Heart, Demme Production Orion Pictures,
Distributor
IFC Films
Release Type
Theatrical, Theatrical (Limited)
Filming Location(s)
Manitoba
MPAA / Certificate
Rated R for some sexuality and violent images
Year of Release
2005
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Color:Color
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Sound mix:Dolby Digital
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Aspect ratio:1.85 : 1
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Runtime:1h 39m
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Language(s):English, Spanish
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Country of origin:Canada
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Release date:Release Date (Theaters): Apr 30, 2003 Original
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 16, 2004
Genre(s)
Musical
Keyword(s)
starring Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros, David Fox, Ross McMillan, Brent Neale, directed by Guy Maddin, written by Guy Maddin, George Toles, produced by Jody Shapiro, Daniel Iron, Niv Fichman, musical, $669.1K box office, R rating, reviewed by Joshua Rothkopf, David Ansen, Joshua Vasquez, Jeannette Catsoulis, Anthony Lane, Moira MacDonald, Cole Smithey, Brian Gibson, Philip Martin, Ken Hanke, Forrest Hartman, J Robert Parks, experimental, 1930s Winnipeg, Canada, amputee baroness, competition, $25,000 prize, saddest music in the world, musicians, Broadway producer, Serbian cellist, tragedy, grief, depression, surreal, satire, cultural identity, Great Depression, oddball humor, drama, bizarre, nostalgic, visual experiments, auto-biographical trilogy
Worldwide gross: $854,994
Worldwide gross (inflation-adjusted): $1,302,997
Worldwide gross ranking (inflation-adjusted): 2,529
Worldwide tickets sold (est.): 142,093
US/Canada gross: $699,225
US/Canada gross (inflation-adjusted): $1,065,607
US/Canada gross ranking (inflation-adjusted): 2,172
US/Canada opening weekend: $37,743
US/Canada opening weekend (inflation-adjusted): $57,520
US/Canada opening weekend ranking (inflation-adjusted): 2,149
Budget and Earnings Details
Production budget (est.): CA$3,500,000
Production budget (inflation-adjusted): NA
Production budget ranking: NA
Marketing and distribution budget (inflation-adjusted est.): NA
Box office net earnings to date (inflation-adjusted est.): NA
ROI to date (est.): NA
ROI ranking: NA
Isabella Rossellini – Lady Port-Huntley
Maria de Medeiros – Narcissa
David Fox – Fyodor
Ross McMillan – Roderick
Brent Neale – Polish Pianist
Director(s)
Guy Maddin
Writer(s)
NA
Producer(s)
Jody Shapiro, Daniel Iron, Niv Fichman
Film Festivals
Toronto
Awards & Nominations
6 wins & 7 nominations
Academy Awards
All Critics (103) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (81) | Rotten (22)
…even Guy Maddin, Canada’s homegrown David Lynch, stumbled with his gorgeous but inconsequential comedy, The Saddest Music In The World.
March 16, 2020
Joshua Rothkopf
In These Times
TOP CRITIC
Hilariously odd and prodigiously inventive, it springs from the eccentric mind of Guy Maddin, whose delirious visions have earned this singular Canadian filmmaker an international cult following.
March 13, 2018
David Ansen
Newsweek
TOP CRITIC
Guy Maddin’s snow globe cinema, hermetically sealed in ghostly adoration of silent cinema, is well matched to this darkly comic fable.
November 4, 2004 | Rating: 3/4
Joshua Vasquez
Slant Magazine
TOP CRITIC
Vital and delirious, The Saddest Music in the World hurtles along on twin tracks of vaudevillian humor and gleeful bad taste.
September 12, 2004 | Rating: 4/5
Jeannette Catsoulis
Las Vegas Mercury
TOP CRITIC
August 1, 2004
Anthony Lane
New Yorker
TOP CRITIC
Watch this movie for its imagination, not its logic.
June 18, 2004 | Rating: 3/4
Moira MacDonald
Seattle Times
TOP CRITIC
The film’s expressionist style and lighting design provide it with an immaculate richness of visual textures.
June 10, 2009 | Rating: B+
Cole Smithey
ColeSmithey.com
Here is magic-realism filtered through an oddball sensibility, chilled in the snowdrifts of Winnipeg and bottled in amber-hued frames of celluloid.
July 2, 2007
Brian Gibson
Vue Weekly (Edmonton, Alberta)
Crammed with cinephilic allusion and rendered in an obsessive “authentic” period style…
January 29, 2005 | Rating: A
Philip Martin
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
The finest portrayal of a double-amputee beer baroness outfitted with glass-encased, beer-filled legs that I could imagine.
January 26, 2005 | Rating: 4/5
Ken Hanke
Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)
One of those metaphoric weird-out flicks that takes mors pride in shocking than telling an interesting tale.
December 17, 2004 | Rating: 1.5/4
Forrest Hartman
Reno Gazette-Journal
December 6, 2004 | Rating: 4/5
J. Robert Parks
Looking Closer…
Plot
It’s the winter of 1933 in Winnipeg. In honor of Winnipeg being named the sorrow capital of the world for the Depression era for the fourth year running by the London Times, Lady Helen Port-Huntley, the legless owner of Winnipeg’s Port-Huntley Beer, is hosting and judging a contest to see which nation has the saddest music in the world, the winner to take home a $25,000 prize. Seeing as to the current Prohibition in the United States, Lady Port-Huntley has ulterior motives for the contest. Father and son, streetcar conductor Fyodor Kent and New York based musical producer Chester Kent, who both have a past connection to Lady Port-Huntley (Fyodor, a WWI veteran and former doctor, has fashioned for her an unusual pair of artificial legs apropos to her business), want to represent Canada and the United States respectively in the contest. Despite Lady Port-Huntley’s hatred for the Kent’s, she does allow them to do so if only to advance her own priorities. As the contest takes place, the Kents, who also include Fyodor’s other son/Chester’s brother, Roderick Kent (who wants to represent Serbia in the contest, as his missing wife is Serbian), deal with their collective sorrow and family dysfunction, the latter issue which involves Chester’s current girlfriend, an amnesiac named Narcissa.
Trivia
Goofs / Tidbits
Isabella Rossellini plays a legless Canadian beer magnate in the film.
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