La chanson du souvenir

For a movie that's about the life of Fredric Chopin the guy who's playing Chopin gets third billing in the film. Cornel Wilde had to settle for third place behind Paul Muni and Merle Oberon. But he's the one that came away with the Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

We're lucky this film got made at all. Paul Muni was a great actor, but sometimes could be very difficult. While he was at Columbia where this film turned out to be the second of three he did there, he formed a friendship with Glenn Ford. But in 1943 Ford went into the Marines and didn't return to Hollywood until 1946. Cornel Wilde who had enlisted earlier got out earlier and when the Chopin project was ready to roll he was assigned the part.

Which disappointed Muni and he made no secret of it to Wilde. Wilde who had admired Muni as an actor and looked forward to working with him was miffed to say the least.

Harry Cohn in his infinite wisdom also banned Bella Muni from the set of A Song to Remember. Muni did EVERYTHING with his wife and she really was his best critic. At Warner Brothers they put up with her. If she said a take was no good, Muni had them do it over. Worked for Emile Zola and Louis Pasteur. But Cohn banned her. As a result Muni was criticized for overacting his role of Joseph Elzner, Chopin's teacher and mentor. It's not his finest hour on the screen, though I love to see him in anything.

Muni also had his supportive side. Nina Foch who played Chopin's sister speaks of Muni's kindness and encouragement to her to stretch herself as an artist.

No acting involved for Merle Oberon as novelist George Sand. The male trousers of George Sand fit Oberon quite well. So does the character. Oberon and Sand were both known to get around in their day.

In real life Fredric Chopin had no conflict between his art and his politics. Though Poland was not a nation for about 130 years, the people in the various countries that occupied Polish soil never forgot they were a nation and would be one again. On instructions after his death, Chopin's body was buried in his adopted city of Paris, but his heart was removed and buried in Poland.

Chopin composed some of the best music that was ever heard on this planet. Jose Iturbi played the various Chopin melodies that will live on until this planet's sun does a supernova.

Cornel Wilde was nominated for Best Actor, but lost to Ray Milland's drunk act in The Lost Weekend. A Song to Remember was nominated in several categories, Best Story, Best Sound, Best Color Cinematography, Best Costumes, Best Musical Scoring. But didn't take home the big prize for anything.

Overlooking some of the historical inaccuracies and Paul Muni's overacting, A Song To Remember is a film to remember.

Knowing that this was Liberace's favorite film should give you an idea of what this film is like--in fact, his trademark candleabra on the piano was taken from one of the most memorable moments in the film.

This was a high profile production for Columbia in 1945, with lots of money thrown at the sets and costumes, and actually filming in color (remember, Columbia was still a second-rank studio during World War II--usually only spending major money on its Rita Hayworth films). Consequently, this biography of Chopin is beautiful to look at--but a bit overboard at the same time. It's certainly not minimalist!

As if competing with the lavishness of the design, the acting (particularly by Paul Muni) is waaaay over the top, and the storyline refashions Chopin's life into a very heavy melodrama. The dramatics are so ham-handed that the Harvard Lampoon in 1945 gave the film an award for the "ketchup on the keys" sequence. Possibly the most interesting aspect of the film (other than its campiness) is how this costume biography is inflected with aspects of 40s film noir. Merle Oberon as author George Sand is the film's femme fatale, potentially drawing Chopin down the wrong creative path. And, since the film was made while World War II was still being fought, the film has to make allusions to patriotic duty (especially since Chopin was Polish, and World War II officially broke out when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939).

So--you have tons of visual excess, some sumptious renditions of Chopin pieces, and a weird discussion of gender relations and wartime responsibilities. All in all, it's a wild piece of gorgeous junk.

There is a trick about movies concerning great or even good composers. Few of them have lives that (outside of musicologists or curious people) are worth talking about. Also, as their music is the reason for their greatness, the music is going to dominate the film - any activity on screen is going to be less interesting (unless the composer's life is interesting) than what they created for their audiences and posterity.

Which composers have popped up on screen? Beethoven in several films (best, possibly, by Gary Oldman in 1994's IMMORTAL BELOVED). Chopin in the film about to be discussed here. His pal, Franz Liszt (Dirk Bogarde) in SONG WITHOUT END. Johann Brahms and Robert Schuman (Robert Walker Sr. and Paul Henried) in SONG OF LOVE. Wagner in the television series of that name (by Richard Burton), and Verdi in the television series of that name (by Ronald Pickup). Douglas Montgomery (MELODY LANE) and Don Ameche (SWANEE RIVER) both essayed Stephen Foster. Clifton Webb was John Philip Sousa in STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER. Walter Connelly was the title composer in THE GREAT VICTOR HERBERT. Jimmy Cagney (and Joel Grey) were George M. Cohan (in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY and GEORGE M.). Robert Alda was George Gershwin in RHAPSODY IN BLUE. Tom Drake and Mickey Rooney were Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in WORDS AND MUSIC. Robert Morley and Maurice Evans were the title characters in THE STORY OF GILBERT AND SULLIVAN. Richard Chamberlain was Pyotr Ilytsch Tschaikowski in THE MUSIC LOVERS. Fernand Gravet was Johann Strauss Jr. in THE GREAT WALTZ.

But few of them were really exciting people. Webb's performance as Sousa was good, but the biographical material of the story was passably interesting (but no more - the music carried the film). Chamberlain's film was more interesting because of Tschaikowski's homosexuality. Cagney's breeziness and the theater background of the story of Cohan made that film a permanently popular one. Foster's tragic failure to succeed as our first professional composer (and his alcoholism) did give some grip to his biography, but sappy construction and writing hurt the Ameche film (especially that profoundly stupid conclusion).

Chopin was "blessed" in several ways biographically. He was a patriot, and part of the film is devoted to his support for the Poles fighting for their freedom from Russia. He did have a long time affair with George Sands, France's leading female novelist in the 19th Century. And he struggled with increasing ill health due to his tuberculosis. He only lived forty years, and oddly enough his birth and death dates almost correspond to his American contemporary Edgar Allan Poe, who was also plagued by ill health through much of his life.

Cornell Wilde had been playing supporting parts up to this film, such as the cowardly inside-man in the heist in HIGH SIERRA. It was here that he finally came into his own as an actor, even getting nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. Merle Oberon had an unusual role. Normally she was a supportive lover (her Cathy is ultimately deeply in love with Heathcliff, but proud and snobbish when she meets Edgar Linton in WUTHERING HEIGHTS - that was an exception for her). Here she is committed to her own literary success, and she does little to understand the musical success at the core of the man who adores her. There is a hint of nymphomania in her - a seeming hard incapacity to love that drives men wild (not only Chopin, but his predecessor in her bed Alfred de Musset the poet (George Macready)). In the end she is the villain in the film, breaking the spirit of her Polish lover, and dooming him to early death.

How true is this? Not totally. While two creative spirits like Chopin and Sand could clash they both were deeply attached to each other. In a television series on the career of Sand, starring Rosemary Harris, it turned out that a message from Chopin on his death bed was withheld from Sand by her jealous daughter - a fact she did not learn until many decades later.

Paul Muni gave a weak, over the top performance as Chopin's mentor Joseph Elsner in the film. He had done older men for years, and Elsner was a slightly comical one (look at his scene with Howard Freeman as a music publisher). But it is overdone, and one of the weaknesses of the movie. Still it is not too serious a weakness. On the whole it is a good film, for the two leads and some of the supporting cast. But it is not true history.

"A Song to Remember" is supposed to be the life of Chopin but in fact, very little in it is historically accurate. It's still a beautiful, emotional, and sumptuous movie, filled with the heavenly music of Chopin played by Jose Iturbi.

"A Song to Remember" helped to popularize Chopin's romantic, passionate music and launched Cornel Wilde's star into the heavens. Though he's never done much for me personally, he cuts a dashing figure as Chopin. The Chopin of Columbia Pictures is a strong patriot of Poland who, under the influence of the controlling George Sand, becomes a self-involved artist. Sand believed (here anyway) that the artist needed to serve himself alone and not others. Thus, she cut him off from his teacher and friend, Professor Elsnore, who wants Chopin to finish his magnificent Polonaise, a freedom cry for his beloved Poland, which is being suppressed by the Russians. Under Sand's control, Chopin turns out little ditties instead.

There really was a Professor Elsnore, but he did not teach Chopin piano, rather, music theory and composition. The role is played effectively by Paul Muni, who works to protect the change in Chopin's personality and apathy toward politics to his family and friends. Merle Oberon is stunning as a cold George Sand. Nina Foch plays Chopin's Polish girlfriend Constantia (and in reality, Constantia did exist).

Well, what is true and what isn't? Chopin was a child prodigy, he did meet George Sand at a party which was also attended by Franz Liszt, the bad weather in Mallorca nearly killed him, and in fact, after that time, he was never fully healthy again. He broke with George Sand two years before he died. She is the one who tried to get back together. His burial isn't covered in the film, but Chopin is buried in Paris. At his request, his heart was removed and buried in Poland.

One of the scenes in "A Song to Remember" has a place in history, though not perhaps in Chopin's, but that of another famous pianist. During a party, it is announced that Franz Liszt will play. The room is plunged into darkness. As the audience listens, George Sand walks over to the piano and places a candleabra on top of it to reveal that it is not Liszt at all, but Chopin. It is said that because of that scene, Liberace never played piano without his own famous candelabra.

Although this film, as many a musical bio before and after it, twists and breaks historical fact –-e.g. Professor Elsner (Paul Muni) portrayed as a father-figure in Chopin's life never went to Paris with his pupil nor was he rejected as the film implies— the story does manage to capture the spirit of the age. Cornel Wilde with his boyish good lucks is well cast as the tormented young Polish composer who died at thirty-nine, and there are two exceptionally strong performances: Merle Oberon has a wonderful moment or two with Muni as she displays a thoroughly convincing steely edge as Chopin's lover and surrogate mother; and the old maestro himself, Muni, is simply superb in the old-fashioned scenery-chewing manner of a great film star who knows exactly how to steal every scene he is in, and does. The film was directed by long-time Columbia Pictures staffer, the Hungarian-born Charles Vidor ("Gilda") who managed to surround himself with a number of other expatriates from the homeland --story by Ernst Marischka; Cornel Wilde as Chopin and Stephen Bekassy as Lizst; and lush musical arrangements by Miklos Rozsa and Eugene Zador. Vidor's professionalism here is greatly aided by the unusually tasteful, rarely garish Technicolor cinematography by Italian-born Tony Gaudio, famous for his gritty black-and-white photography at Warner Bros. Here Gaudio has a chance to show what wonders he could do with the more elegant settings the usually tight-fisted Harry Cohn constructed on the Gower Street lot.