A Song to Remember ** (1944, Cornel Wilde, Merle Oberon, Paul Muni, Stephen Bekassy, George Coulouris, George Macready, Nina Foch) – Classic Movie Review 4602

Put the 1945 film A Song to Remember on your Chopin Liszt! Cornel Wilde as Frédéric Chopin earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor – his only ever Oscar nomination. Stephen Bekassy co-stars as Franz Liszt.

Director Charles Vidor’s 1944 Columbia Pictures Technicolor biographical drama A Song to Remember is a deliriously kitsch, highly amusing fictionalised version of the life of Polish composer and virtuoso pianist Frédéric [Fryderyk] Chopin (1810 – 1849) in the Romantic era. It stars Cornel Wilde as Frédéric Chopin, Merle Oberon as novelist George Sand and Paul Muni as Chopin’s music professor, Joseph Elsner. There were six Oscar nominations.

Wilde earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor (his only ever Oscar nomination). The film was also nominated for Best Cinematography, Color (Allen M Davey and Tony Gaudio), Best Film Editing (Charles Nelson), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Miklós Rózsa and Morris Stoloff), Best Sound, Recording (John P Livadary) and Best Writing, Original Story (Ernst Marischka). There were no wins.

Based on Frank Capra’s screenplay for his planned but abandoned biopic, it is all but a lost cause, though nevertheless it is still diverting and entertaining. Production values are high, so the eye and the ear are pleasantly diverted. But do not look to it for anything like truth, history, enlightenment or real wit or great acting.

Miklós Rózsa adapts the pretty music, played by José Iturbi. The screenplay is by the producer Sidney Buchman.

Stephen Bekassy co-stars as Franz Liszt, the subject of the 1960 biopic Song without End, started by Vidor, who died after filming only a sixth of that movie, in which Dirk Bogarde plays Liszt.

Roger Daltrey plays Franz Liszt in Ken Russell’s 1975 Lisztomania.

Also in the cast are George Coulouris, George Macready, Sig Arno, Howard Freeman, Nina Foch, Eugene Borden, Fern Emmett, Gregory Gaye, Fay Helm, Darren McGavin, Henry Sharp, Ivan Triessault, Michael Visaroff, Ian Wolfe, Sybil Merritt and Frank Puglia.

A Song to Remember runs 113 minutes, is made and released by Columbia Pictures, is written by Sidney Buchman, is shot in Technicolor by Allen M Davey and Tony Gaudio, is produced by Sidney Buchman, is scored by Miklós Rózsa and Morris Stoloff, and is designed by Lionel Banks and Van Nest Polglase.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4602

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