Faithful readers of mine are in for a severe shock. As they well know, I am notoriously hostile to films that are (a) slow, (b) dark and murky, (c) with long close-ups of suffering actors' faces substituting for dialogue, and (d) in a foreign language. Indeed these four elements almost always go together.

Recently, I saw a movie which has all four of these elements. So much so, in fact, that an old friend of mine, who loves slow, plotless, gloomy, avant-garde movies, saw the film in Paris, and said that he and his friends went reeling out of the theater, "holding their heads," after three long, suffering hours. (Actually, it's less than two hours but to him it felt like three.) I went to the theater fully prepared either to squirm uncomfortably, or to take a nap in the luxurious seats.

Instead, to the stunned surprise of myself and my wife, I found a genuine masterpiece, one of the best and most notable pictures in years. The picture is indeed French: Tous Les Matins du Monde, ("Every Morning in the World") directed by Alain Corneau, from a novel written in conjunction with the movie by Pascal Quignard, who then transformed it into the screenplay. It's true that there is little dialogue, but essentially substituting for it is truly glorious seventeenth-century French Baroque music, featuring the Baroque viola da gamba, essentially the Baroque ancestor to the modern cello. The music is truly a revelation, largely composed by the main figures in the movie. For the plot of the movie concerns the legendary seventeenth-century violist and composer Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe (no first name known) and his student and disciple, the better-known Marin Marais. In addition to being a movie about little-remembered but marvelous musicians and composers, the soundtrack and the plot feature the music itself. It is also a romantic, moving, and perceptive film about the truths and tensions of master-disciple relationship, which carries insights beyond music into scholarship, science, and indeed every walk of life. Sainte-Colombe is the pure musician, who, while the premier violist and composer of his day, has retreated into a quasi-hermetic existence, not merely out of mourning for his dead young wife, but also in revulsion against the trivialization of music by the flashy musicians and composers of King Louis XIV's court.

Scorning a call to play in the King's service, Sainte-Colombe is pestered by a bright young violist and composer who wants to study under him; the master is reluctant, for he sees the opportunism in the young lad's character. In later years, the student, young Marin Marais, indeed betrays Saint-Columbe's daughter and leaves to become famous in the King's service; but later, older and fatter, Marin, knowing that the true soul of music had escaped him, returns to try to listen undetected to hear Sainte-Colombe play the marvelous lost compositions that the master refuses to publish and will take with him to his grave. In a stunning final sequence, the dying Sainte-Colombe and the returned and chastened Marais play a magnificent and heart-rending viola duet of the previously lost music.

The older Marais is played by the highly overrated Gerard Depardieu, but fortunately his part is a small one, the young Marais played by his son Guillaume, who actually looks very little like his old man. But the real star of the movie is Jean-Pierre Marielle, who is simply magnificent as the noble maitre, Sainte-Colombe.

This is one of the great films of recent years which should not be missed. Although you should be warned that if you are so base as not to like Baroque music, this movie is not for you. The film came out in late 1991, but why didn't it receive the foreign film Oscar last year? Actually I am happy to report that this film received seven Cesars (the French equivalent of the Oscar), and won awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Music. The sound track for Tous Les Matins has also been a big hit; over 350,000 copies of the CD have been sold in Europe, outselling even Michael Jackson in France, and was also No. 1 in Argentina. When the film opened in New York, 5,000 copies of the CD were sold in one week, actually outselling Madonna's "Erotica." Hey, maybe there's hope for our culture yet!

Music historians are griping because the plot is inaccurate, since little is known of Sainte-Colombe's life. But who cares? What's wrong with fiction? As it is, the film is a wonderful, romantic tribute to musicians as well as to music, and to the best of the Old Culture. Music scholar Mark Kroll writes in the journal Bostonia (Spring 1993) that "there are moments in the film when one seems to be looking at a painting by Vermeer or Watteau which has come to life. Several musicians have also commented how startled they were by the quiet; that is, how faithfully the director was able to recreate the acoustical context in which this music was actually heard, one undisturbed by all the external white noise pollution of twentieth-century life." Yes, yes! See the movie, then buy the soundtrack, for the Baroque, in music, art, architecture, was the pinnacle that human civilization has yet reached.