Menuhin – A Family Portrait
Directed by Tony Palmer Duration: 105 mins.
Yehudi Menuhin, a name that was legendary for over 60 years, remains so even today. A good man and a great violinist, whose childhood was blessed with happiness and success unparalleled even among child prodigies. At least, that was the legend. The truth was painfully different. The violinist who inspired Einstein to remark; “Now I know there is a God in heaven”, was also a man of whom his sister could say: “We have done more harm to people we love than we ever believed ourselves capable of doing to people we didn’t love”.
Filmed in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Moscow, New York, San Francisco and Switzerland, and using much material not seen previously from Menuhin’s own archive, this heart-rending and multi-award winning film included all the members of Menuhin’s family living at the time, who struggle to piece together what had really happened to the son of Russian Tartar parents who was defiantly named Yehudi – ‘the Jew’.
