Chopin. Pragnienie milosci

Desire for Love is an excellent film showing the life of Chopin. It strongly shows his fragility in life and passion for his music. Adanczyk plays the great composer giving us the compassion and sympathy for Chopin. The film covers his long-term relationship with Madame George Sands and the struggle between Chopin and Sands children. It is a sad love story, but makes one love Chopin even more for his sensitivity and love for Sands, his country, and his music. Throughout the whole film the best of Chopin is played. There is much more to the composer than the film portrays yet this film is an excellent introduction to his life. I did not want the film to end. His Waltz in A minor 17 plays throughout the film, which brings out a happiness yet a sadness in oneself.

I don't understand a word of Polish, and there are no subtitles present, but I have had many wonderful times watching the DVD. (I own a multi-system DVD player.) The Polish countryside scenes are beautiful, and the actor who played Chopin certainly knew how to play the piano! There are a lot of fights in this movie, usually between Chopin and George Sand, or else George Sand and her husband, or George Sand and her son, or Chopin and George Sand's son (Maurice, her son, HATED Chopin.) George Sand was a French lady writer really named Aurore Dudevant. She wore trousers (practically unheard of for a lady in her day), smoked, and climbed mountains. George Sand was married to another fellow while she was having a lengthy affair with Chopin. There are also a lot of parties in this movie. At one of the parties, George Sand makes a long speech. Also, somebody always seems to be riding a carriage somewhere. In the beginning of the film, there are a lot of soldiers running around.

All in all, it's a great picture and a must see for any Chopin fans. Chopin: Pragnienie Milosci is a famous movie in Poland and from what I understand, it was a very big deal when it came out. In English, the title means: Chopin, Desire for Love.

Chopin's music has always been deeply touching, also soul-searching and quite haunting when played very well. Even when a film/TV series does stretch the truth a bit, it does deserve to stand on its own two feet, there are historically flimsy films that are still great films in their own way but there are also others where the historical flimsiness is the least of its problems. And actually that is the case with Desire of Love. It is beautifully filmed, while the costumes and sets are just as striking as well as the scenery. Chopin's music is phenomenal, and the way it's played has all the impact the music ought to have and the players allow the music to speak for itself. The acting is reasonably good and the actors do what they can, Danuta Stenka is very impassioned and with a physical likeliness to George Sand herself it is like Sand come to life. Piotr Adamczyk is credible as Chopin as well. Desire of Love however is one of those instances where there are good intentions and ideas that are not executed very well at all. The dialogue is very ham-fisted, not very natural in flow and with the bouts of tedious melodrama too much like an overdone/overwrought soap opera. The direction often plays too much of a mood-piece, and sadly there are not many moods to be found here, so it was a well-intended approach that back-fired. The story is rather pedestrian pace-wise and is very disjointed, with everything jumping around and about as often as it did too often it was not easy to fully follow. While some of the content in Desire of Love probably was accurate, very little is done to help us learn of the context of each piece, or to fully get and identify with the characters(written in a rather shallow way) and the connection between Chopin's life and his music is very poorly explored. And as great the music is and how wonderfully played it is, a lot of it was only in snippets, the music deserves better than that. In conclusion, visually and musically outstanding and with a decent cast but dull, ham-fisted, disjointed and just not as interesting as it should've been. 4/10 Bethany Cox

I am a self-professed Chopin junkie since age 10. As one who has read many biographies of Chopin and seen the 3 movies about his life: A Song to Remember, Impromptu and Desire for Love (Pragnienie milosci), there is only one scene in all of them that made me sit up and say, "Yessssss!" This is where Chopin's valet, Jan Matuszewski, is playing an oberek on the violin and Chopin asks him to repeat it. It turns into his D major Mazurka from Op. 33. Other than that scene, the movie is pretty schlocky. I do love that one scene, though!

I loved this movie. Pjotr Adamczik and Danuta Stenka are marvelous actors, I liked his delicate movements and her "real face". The pictures are beautiful the music is very well chosen and wonderfully performed. Sometimes the plot is a little "scatchy" especially for those who are not really expert in Chopin's (or Madame Sand's) life, but mostly follows the real history (e.g.the gray haired man, hanging around half drunk in Nohant is happen to be Hippolyte Chatiron, half brother of Sand). In spite of some rather primitive solution (the Russian brutes,the plastic eagles in Majorca...)the balance is definitely positive thanks to such delicate and subtle scenes as e.g. Madame Sand in the kitchen wiping her forehead, Chopin, coming home late at night, his walk in the alley and then - one of my favourite - meeting Jan, their conversation then Jan, watching his master, climbing upstairs...or the scene with Albert (Grzymala)and the discussion of Solange's marriage...or the last meeting of the angelic Maestro and Madame Sand (actually it happened so !) - really beautiful and delicate.Thanks, pan Antczak !