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Released
1998 · FILM

The Legend of 1900

A gifted orphan raised on a transatlantic liner strives to become the ultimate piano virtuoso while battling his fear of the unknown world beyond the ship’s decks, where every performance could either seal his legend or shatter his fragile sense of belonging.

“An epic story of a man who could do anything... except be ordinary”

Directed by
Giuseppe Tornatore
Written by
Alessandro Baricco, Giuseppe Tornatore
Rated
MPA · R
Runtime
170 min
Language
IT
DramaMusicRomance

Synopsis

Musician Max Tooney goes to sell his prized Conn trumpet to a music shop, where he plays the instrument one last time. The shopkeeper recognizes the song as one on a record matrix he found and asks who the piece is by. Tooney tells the story of an infant found abandoned in the first class dining room of the four-stacker ocean-liner *SS Virginian* on 1 January 1900. Danny Boodman, a coal-man from the boiler room, names the boy Danny Boodman T. D. Lemon 1900, after himself, the fruit crate the boy was found in, and the year, and raises him as his own.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 32

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Massimo QuagliaShot by Lajos KoltaiScored by Ennio MorriconeDesigned by Francesco Frigeri

Box Office

1998 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.3× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$21.1M

Budget$9.0M
Worldwide gross$21.1M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Die Legende vom Ozeanpianistende
  • The Legend of 1900en
  • La leyenda del pianista en el océanoes
  • La Légende du pianiste sur l'océanfr

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