The Saddest Music in the World

It’s 1933 in Winnipeg and the Great Depression is in full bloom. Beer Baroness Lady Port-Huntly (Isabella Rossellini) announces a global competition to determine the saddest music in the world, and musicians from across the globepour into town to vie for the whopping $25,000 prize. Sobbing Mexican Mariachis, dour Scottish Bagpipers, woeful West African drummers and numerous other grief-stricken ensembles give it their all. Down-on-his-luck Broadway producer Chester Kent (Mark McKinney) and his amnesiac girlfriend Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros) return home to his native Winnipeg as the United States entry in the contest. He soon finds himself embroiled in a family reunion as treacherous and twisted as the competition itself.

Part musical melodrama, part tongue-incheek social satire, Guy Madden’s expressionistic film achieves a level of lunacy rarely seen since the Marx Brothers.

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