SONG OF LOVE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 448, 23 January 1948, Page 24

SONG OF LOVE

(M.G.M.) OLLYWOOD, which has for over a generation been a byword for hyperbole, allows itself one piece of classic understatement in this picture. "Certain (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) liberties," runs the foreword, "have been taken with the incidents and- chronology." The consequence of these liberties is a film which, setting out to de-, pict the life of Clara and Robert Schumann, completely fails to realise the deep dramatic possibilities of its subject, a film which will certainly infuriate a few by its banalities and solecisms, and which even the majority may at times find tedious. In the story of the Schumanns-the high romance of their love and marriage, their domestic difficulties, their friendship with Brahms and Liszt, the tragedy of Robert’s insanity, the Schumanndammerung at Endenich, and Clara’s triumphant vindication of her husband’s genius-there is material enough for a dozen dramas. What is offered us here rarely rises above the level, of soap opera. It is the Davidsbundler vanquished by the Philistines. Paul Henreid, as Schumann, is the only member of the cast who seems to understand the part he has to play, and there’ are moments when he does succeed in revealing something of the anguish and self-doubt which ended in the tragedy of an unhinged mind. But for the most part, like the others, he is lost in reams of banal and often fatuous dialogue which is no tribute to the memoty of anyone. Apart from one scene with Liszt (Henry Daniell) in which she recaptures something of the original Clara’s spirit, Katherine Hepburn’s performance is vitiated by the prevailing sentimentality of the screen-story.. Daniell, who is called upon to make brief appearances only, does not do badly, but on the whole the minor characters loudly proclaim their Americanism, and Hollywood’s intellectual inability to handle the subject, There is some good music-small-scale, it is true, but it could not be otherwise in an orthodox screen biography-played (behind the scenes) by Artur Rubinstein. I felt however, that these crumbs from the master’s table were a poor substitute for the bread that might have been provided.