# They Shall Have Music (1939) -- featuring the great Jascha Heifitz



## mitchflorida (Apr 24, 2012)

Very good Hollywood movie featuring Jascha Heifitz in his first and only acting role! Possibly the greatest violinist of all time. At least to my ears.


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

He played for nearly 40', and he was in his prime. Absolute fantastic playing. But he's the only valuable thing of a very mediocre film.


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## mitchflorida (Apr 24, 2012)

This is a remarkable film. In 1939, the classical violinist Jascha Heifetz (generally regarded by common consent in the classical music world as the greatest violinist of the 20th century, which is certainly my view) was actually a popular icon in America. So far have cultural standards declined that such a thing would be impossible to imagine today, in a world contaminated by Madonnas and Kylies and other such low life characters who prance around showing off their **** and bottoms and think of themselves as 'musicians'. And so Samuel Goldwyn decided to make a whole feature film around Heifetz, admirably directed by Archie Mayo. The story is first rate, and Heifetz is portrayed as a stratospheric and inaccessible concert star who happens to run into a poor kid in New York, through a series of amusing circumstances, and thereby becomes involved with the fate of a music school for disadvantaged urban children. The school is continually threatened with closure through lack of funds, but no one dares tell the idealistic head of the school, played by the endearing Walter Brennan, that there are drastic debts owing and angry creditors at the door. In one hair-raising scene, a ruthless music instrument supplier has removal men seize all the instruments from the children of the school's orchestra when they are in the middle of a concert.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde (Dec 2, 2011)

At 12:35 how on earth can he do sautille so high in the bow????


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Anything you can do, he can do better, he can do anything better than you.


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