Made in 1992, Un Coeur En Hiver was French writer/director Claude Sautet's first feature film in four years. Daniel Auteuil plays lonely violin restorer Stephane, who is commissioned to produce an instrument for concert violinist Camille, who is the girlfriend of his married partner Maxime. Camille falls in love with Stephane, and leaves Maxime for him, only to find that he does not seem to return her feelings. The two men fight over her, but Camille eventually regains her composure.
Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the third-largest city in Africa with 10 million inhabitants. The film shows how some people living there have managed to forge one of the most complex systems of human cooperation ever invented: a symphony orchestra (Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste) performing composers such as Handel, Verdi, Beethoven. "Kinshasa Symphony" shows Kinshasa in all its diversity, speed, colour, vitality and energy. It is a film about the Congo, about the people of Kinshasa and about music.
A mute Scotswoman named Ada McGrath is sold by her father into marriage to a New Zealand frontiersman named Alisdair Stewart, bringing her young daughter Flora with her. The voice that the audience hears in the opening narration is "not her speaking voice, but her mind's voice". Ada has not spoken a word since she was six years old and no one, including herself, knows why. She expresses herself through her piano playing and through sign language, for which her daughter has served as the interpreter. Flora later dramatically tells two women in New Zealand that her mother has not spoken since the death of her husband who died as a result of being struck by lightning. Ada cares little for the mundane world, occupying herself for hours every day with the piano. Flora, it is later learned, is the product of a relationship with a teacher with whom Ada believed she could communicate through her mind, but who "became frightened and stopped listening," and thus left her.
Erika Kohut is a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Although already in her forties, she still lives in an apartment with her domineering mother; her father is a long-standing resident in a psychiatric asylum.
Daniel Daréus (Michael Nyqvist) is a successful and renowned international conductor whose life aspiration is to create music that will open people's hearts. His own heart, however, is in bad shape. After suffering a heart attack on stage at the end of a performance, he retires indefinitely to Norrland in the far north of Sweden, to the village where he endured a terrible childhood of bullying.
Évocation de la vie de Louis II de Bavière, depuis son couronnement à l'âge de dix-huit ans et demi jusqu'à son internement et sa mort à quarante. On y découvre la complicité presque amoureuse qui le lie à sa cousine Sissi (la jeune impératrice d'Autriche-Hongrie) qui est à deux doigts de parvenir à lui faire épouser sa sœur Sophie malgré le peu d'attirance qu'il a pour celle-ci, son entichement déraisonnable pour la musique de Richard Wagner, dont il devient le très généreux mécène au point de lui faire construire un opéra, les circonstances qui l'amènent à céder aux penchants qui lui seront funestes : son goût du rêve, du post-romantisme, des garçons (son palefrenier devenant son chambellan et homme de confiance très intime), des châteaux de contes de fées, pour l'édification desquels il dépense des fortunes et dans lesquels il fuira les dures réalités de son temps (à savoir : l'irrésistible unification allemande autour de la Prusse de Bismarck qui vassalise tous les autres royaumes ou principautés germaniques, Bavière y compris) en s'imaginant, entouré d'une garde rapprochée de serviteurs, qu'il est encore vrai roi en son royaume. Jusqu'à ce que le gouvernement effectif de Munich l'extirpe de son rêve et l'interne au château de Berg… où il meurt dès le lendemain de son arrivée en tentant, dans des circonstances jamais vraiment élucidées, de s'évader.
Peter P. Peters (Fred Astaire), an American ballet dancer billed as "Petrov", dances for a ballet company in Paris owned by the bumbling Jeffrey Baird (Edward Everett Horton). Peters secretly wants to blend classical ballet with modern jazz dancing, and when he sees a photo of famous tap dancer Linda Keene (Ginger Rogers), he falls in love with her. He contrives to meet her, but she is less than impressed. They meet again on an ocean liner traveling back to New York, and Linda warms to Petrov. Unknown to them, a plot is launched as a publicity stunt "proving" that they are actually married. Outraged, Linda becomes engaged to the bumbling Jim Montgomery (William Brisbane), much to the chagrin of both Peters and Arthur Miller (Jerome Cowan), her manager, who secretly launches more fake publicity. Peters and Keene, unable to squelch the rumor, decide to actually marry and then immediately get divorced. Linda begins to fall in love with her husband, but then discovers him with another woman, Lady Denise Tarrington (Ketti Gallian), and leaves before he can explain. Later, when she comes to his new show to personally serve him divorce papers, she sees him dancing with dozens of women, all wearing masks with her face on them: Peters has decided that if he cannot dance with Linda, he will dance with images of Linda. Seeing that he truly loves her, she happily joins him onstage.
A former world-famous conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra, known as "The Maestro," Andrey Simonovich Filipov, had had his career publicly broken by Leonid Brezhnev for defending Jewish musicians and is reduced to working as a mere janitor in the theatre where he once conducted, becoming an alcoholic in the process.
Sir Alfred de Carter (Rex Harrison) is a world-famous symphony conductor who returns from a visit to his native England and discovers that his rich and boring brother-in-law, August Henshler (Rudy Vallee), has misunderstood Alfred's casual instruction to watch over his much younger wife Daphne (Linda Darnell) while he was away, and instead hired a detective named Sweeney (Edgar Kennedy) to follow her. Alfred is livid, and ineptly attempts to destroy any evidence of the detective's report.
Ageing court composer Marin Marais recalls his former master and un-equalled viol player, the jansenist Monsieur de Sainte Colombe. Sainte Colombe buried himself in his music after the death of his wife bringing up his two daughters on his own, and teaching them to be musicians, and playing in a consort with them for local noble audiences. His reputation reaching the court of Louis XIV, the king sent an envoy, Caignet, to request him to play at court. But Sainte Colombe sent the envoy away as well as the abbé Mathieu, and shut himself away in a cabin in his garden in order to perfect the art of viol playing.
Le film retrace le voyage d'Isaac Stern en Chine au lendemain de la Révolution culturelle. Il fut le premier musicien occidental à accepter l'invitation du gouvernement chinois.
Le jeune Franz Schubert tombe amoureux de Caroline Esterházy, son élève. Mais quand cette dernière informe son père de son intention d'épouser Schubert, le Comte ordonne au musicien de retourner à Vienne. Il retrouvera Caroline plus tard, alors qu'elle se marie, et lui donnera le manuscrit de sa symphonie inachevée.
En 1777, après une dispute avec le Prince-archevêque de Salzbourg Hieronymus von Colloredo-Mannsfeld, Mozart part avec sa mère pour Paris. Pendant le voyage, il persuade sa mère de s'arrêter à Mannheim pour voir Aloysia Weber dont il est amoureux. Après avoir chanté une chanson composée par Mozart, elle a obtenu un emploi à la cour royale. À contrecœur Mozart se rend à Paris. Mais en France, il ne retrouve pas le succès qu'il a connu comme enfant prodige. De plus, sa mère meurt à Paris. Il retourne donc à Salzbourg.