Film helped revive forgotten instrument

Film can set fashions (would trench coats have been as popular without Bogart?), send viewers shopping (see: action figures and trading cards) and popularize all sorts of music (the song “Ghostbusters” topped the charts).

But could it really help spur the recent revival of French Baroque music, and fuel the renewed interest in the viola da gamba, an instrument that had been rare since the 18th century?

It may sound improbable, but the 1991 Alain Corneau film “Tous les Matins du Monde,” starring Gérard Depardieu and featuring a soundtrack by Catalan viol master Jordi Savall, did just that — in ways that continue to resonate more than a quarter of a century later.

“Young people were fascinated by the film,” recalled Savall, who is on a tour to play the movie’s music with Le Concert des Nations and was to perform it Thursday night at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in New York City.

“The movie reached people who would never go to a concert, especially a concert of Baroque music.”

The film was a phenomenon, racking up awards and drawing audiences around the globe. Its Louis Xiv-era soundtrack scaled the charts in France, where it outsold all but Michael Jackson. And on the weekend of the film’s U.S. release, the album, featuring music by Baroque composers Lully, Saintecolombe and Marais, sold more copies than Madonna’s “Erotica” at some New York stores, prompting one newspaper to ask: “Better than sex?”