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A Song to Remember Movie Review

A Song to Remember is a 1945 biographical film directed by Charles Vidor and starring Cornel Wilde, Paul Muni and Merle Oberon. It’s a very messy, rather odd biopic.

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“I do not play before Russian butchers!“

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The famed composer Chopin sacrifices everything, even love, for his native Poland in this highly fictionalized take on his life. A very quick online search about this famous composer and his life is enough to make you aware just how ludicrous this movie is when tackling it. It is nowhere near close to his life and it’s, in fact, so drastically altered that I don’t see the point in even making it in the first place.

Merle Oberon playing basically a villain when she should have played a sympathetic woman in his life was very troublesome. She is memorably icy here, but that entire conflict felt contrived with the musical cues meant to elevate her scenes to an even more ominous tone, but failing spectacularly at it. Again, she is a great actress, but this just wasn’t her best role.

Others did not fare better either. Cornel Wilde is well cast, but he was ultimately very forgettable in the role as it was an underwritten, painfully boring role in a movie that was supposed to be about Chopin himself, but he seemed to be a side character in it. Paul Muni was more memorable, but he overacted his part a bit, which was unfortunate.

The characterization and the script are more to blame in this instance than these fine actors. The directing is also problematic as Charles Vidor failed to find any purpose or heart in this story. He meandered quite a bit, not hitting anything of real substance in the process. At least the technical aspects were great.

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Yes, A Song to Remember is only worth seeing for its audio-visuals. The Technicolor on display is quite sumptuous, especially the costumes and sets. The score is naturally phenomenal. It is a film about a composer after all, thus suitably the score is timeless and quite grandiose. Of the six Oscar nominations, it deserved to get those technical noms, but the ones for acting and writing were ridiculous, especially because the script is so inherently messy and muddled.