Cast
Jascha Heifetz
Program notes
The only film biography of the world's most renowned violinist, featuring family home movies in Los Angeles and all over the world.
Not since Paganini had there been such a magician on the violin. The first modern violin virtuoso, about whom Itzhak Perlman says in the films, "When I spoke with him, I thought 'I can't believe it. I'm talking with God'."
A musical wunderkind, he went on to set the standard in violin playing for nearly a century. This film portrays an artist for whom only perfection would do, so well known in popular culture that his name became shorthand for excellence for everyone from Jack Benny to The Muppets, to Woody Allen.
Heifetz was a legendary but mysterious figure whose story embodies the dual nature of artistic genius: the paradox of how a mortal man lives with immortal gifts – gifts he must honor, but which extract a lifelong price. Is the man and the artist the same person? What is the price each pays? And who was the man behind the music?