Synopsis for
The Red Violin (1998) More at IMDbPro »Le violon rouge (original title)

This movie features a red violin created by master violin builder, Nicolo Bussotti, for the birth of his child in 1681. It was his masterpiece, a perfect violin. Following the death of his wife (Anna) who dies together with his unborn child giving birth, the movie uses a frame story based on a fortune telling by the servant (Cesca). Who, instead of predicting the future of Anna Bussotti, tells the future of the violin. The main return point in the movie is the auctioning of the Red Violin at the Duval auction house and then proceeds to follow the violin's history as it passes from person to person beginning at an Austrian monastery where it is passed on from child to child ending its life at the monastery with a talented orphan, Kaspar Weiss who after being taken under the wing of Georges Poussin comes to an untimely death auditioning to the Prince Mansfeld. The violin "slumbers" as it is traded and moves on to have several gypsy owners. Until it moves on to the English Lord Frederick Pope when the gypsies set up camp on his estate in Oxford. Pope becomes asphyxiated by the violin in such a manner that it ends up with the violin getting shot by his jealous lover. Following the departure of his lover and the shot at the violin he kills himself and the violin gets taken to China by the hands of his former servant who sells it at a bond shop. The violin then undergoes the bantering of a communist China which at that time found western music unacceptable. At the auctioning descendants of the previous owners of the violin are there together with Carles Morritz (Samuel L. Jackson) who is a violin expert who was to verify if the red violin was actually the red violin and not a very good copy of it, when it came through customs.