The Legend Of 1900 — True Story Behind Film

Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton was a real person and a pioneer of jazz music.

Perhaps the most "true" element of the story is its philosophical core. The film’s climax, where 1900 refuses to leave the ship as it is rigged with dynamite to be sunk, resonates with the tragic end of the age of ocean liners. By the mid-20th century, the era of the great liners was dying, killed by the advent of commercial air travel. 1900’s refusal to step onto land is a refusal to enter a modern world he does not understand. He chooses to die with his world—the ship—rather than exist in a limited, finite reality on land. the legend of 1900 true story behind film

The film’s screenwriter, Giuseppe Tornatore, admitted that the story was inspired by a short play he saw in a tiny Buenos Aires theater in 1983—which itself was based on an anonymous memoir found in a shipbreaker’s yard in Genoa. That memoir, titled The Last Stoker , told of a man who worked from age 8 to 68 on the same steamer, never once touching land. When the ship was scrapped, he sat in the dry dock and played a broken harmonica until the wreckers hauled him away. Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton was a real person

The Legend of 1900: The True Story Behind the Film’s Mythical Piano Prodigy By the mid-20th century, the era of the

Named "1900," the boy grows up to be a musical prodigy who refuses to ever step foot on land.