by Catherine Marquis-Homeyer
staff editor

"The Legend of 1900" is a beautifully photographed fantasy about a man born and raised on a turn-of-the-century luxury ocean liner who lives on the ship as it makes it's endless Atlantic crossings.

This film from the Italian director of the magical "Cinema Paradiso" (which was about a boy growing up in his family's movie theater) shares with that earlier film the same lush and even startling visual beauty. "The Legend of 1900" uses the elegant settings of an ocean liner resplendent in stained glass windows and dark velvet, the dark industrial look of the ship's boiler room, and graceful period beauty of 1920s fashions to evoke a dreamy image of another time.

After a shipboard New Year's Eve party celebrating the year 1900, a crewmember finds an abandoned baby left by party revelers. The foundling is taken below deck and raised in secret by the crew, so his birth is never registered, he has no home country and no official existence. The crewmember that found him cautions the young boy to stay hidden and to never get off the ship. The boy is given the last name 1900, for the year of his birth, and as he grows he displays a startling talent for music. His artistry as a pianist reveals his existence to the officers of the ship but also helps him secure a position as an entertainer on the luxury liner's endless voyages.

The director effectively creates this mythic character and strange setting for the tale. As 1900 (played by Tim Roth) becomes a young man in the 1920s, rumors of his talent as a musician spread from the ship. This leads to one of the best parts of the film: a musical confrontation with flamboyant jazz great Jelly Roll Morton.

Unfortunately, having set up this mythical presence in the character 1900 and the intriguing situation, the filmmaker fails to develop enough storyline to carry the film. Also, the director's use of a narrator, a fellow musician, keeps the audience at a distance from the character, so that the audience does not come to care enough about the character. Essentially, the beautiful period look of the film and its unusual premise give the film appeal, but the director's failure in these two areas prevents the film from being as good as it could have been.

(Now playing at the Chase Park Plaza)