| The Saddest Music in the World | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Guy Maddin |
| Screenplay by | Guy Maddin George Toles |
| Based on | The Saddest Music in the World by Kazuo Ishiguro |
| Produced by | Niv Fichman Daniel Iron Jody Shapiro |
| Starring | Mark McKinney Isabella Rossellini Maria de Medeiros David Fox Ross McMillan |
| Cinematography | Luc Montpellier |
| Edited by | David Wharnsby |
| Music by | Christopher Dedrick |
| Distributed by | IFC Films |
Release date |
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Running time | 99 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | CAD $3.8 million (estimated)[1] |
The Saddest Music in the World is a 2003 Canadian film directed by Guy Maddin. Budgeted at $3.8-million and shot over 24 days, the film marks Maddin's first collaboration with actor Isabella Rossellini.[1]
Maddin and co-screenwriter George Toles based the film on an original screenplay written by British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, from which they kept "the title, the premise and the contest – to determine which country’s music was the saddest" but otherwise re-wrote.[2] Like most of Guy Maddin's films, The Saddest Music in the World is filmed in a style that imitates late 1920s and early 1930s cinema, with grainy black-and-white photography, slightly out-of-sync sound and expressionist art design. A few scenes are filmed in colour, in a manner that imitates early two-strip Technicolor.
- ^ a b Beard, William (2010). Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1442610668.
- ^ Ball, Jonathan (2004). "Guy Maddin and George Toles interviewed about writing The Saddest Music in the World". scr(i)pt magazine.