The Saddest Music in the World

The Saddest Music in the World
Directed byGuy Maddin
Screenplay byGuy Maddin
George Toles
Based onThe Saddest Music in the World
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Produced byNiv Fichman
Daniel Iron
Jody Shapiro
StarringMark McKinney
Isabella Rossellini
Maria de Medeiros
David Fox
Ross McMillan
CinematographyLuc Montpellier
Edited byDavid Wharnsby
Music byChristopher Dedrick
Distributed byIFC Films
Release date
  • September 7, 2003 (2003-09-07)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
BudgetCAD $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.

  1. ^ a b Beard, William (2010). Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1442610668.
  2. ^ Ball, Jonathan (2004). "Guy Maddin and George Toles interviewed about writing The Saddest Music in the World". scr(i)pt magazine.