I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 498, 7 January 1949, Page 16

I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU

(Republic) HE theme of this long, emo'f tional, and rather tedious film is expressed pretty early on by its pianist hero Leopold Goronoff (Philip Dorn), when he says: "Devil take the woman who would marry a musician." A kind of subsidiary theme is introduced when one of the minor characters says "Goronoff is rude," for the maestro (or Master as he is generally called) goes on being as rude as possible to everyone, including the audience, for nearly the whole 11,000 feet of I’ve Always Loved You. In fact, asa bad-temperedi exemplar of the caddishness of genius, Philip Dorn gives a thoroughly convincing performance. However, the film’s main attraction is the abundance of fine piano-playing by Artur Rubinstein, especially of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. ‘Although Rubinstein does not appear in the film he received 85,000 dollars for his work on the soundtrack-a_ large ‘sum even for Hollywood. Even this expenditure, of course, is still no reason for him being loudly acclaimed in the credit titles as "the world’s greatest pianist." During the first part of the film Goronoff’s Pennsylvanian protegée Myra (Catherine MacLeod) accompanies him on a_ technicoloured concert tour of Europe for two years before she finally. appears herself, in Carnegie Hall, playing the Rachmaninoff concerto with Goronoff conducting. Although she is madly in love with him, she succeeds in prov-

ing during the concert that musically she is the master of the two of them. Goronoff’s vanity is so hurt because she "took control" of the performance that he orders her out, and she returns to Pennsylvania to marry George (William Carter), the farmer ber-aiene of her youth, Her marriage is, of course, unhappy, for she is haunted by her past love for the Master. But when, 20 years later, her daughter also becomes a_ great pianiste and Myra meets Goronoff again, she discovers that her imagined love for him was just an illusion and falls into her husband’s arms (half-way through the Concerto) sobbing "I’ve Always Loved You." This may surprise some of the audience, but it helps to prove the moral stated at the beginning of the film ("Devil take the woman, etc."’) and also shows that a happy life with a nice farmer is better (for women) ‘than the artistic life as led by such boorish Colossi of the Keyboard as Leopold Goronoff. In commercial radio this sort of thing is called soap opera, and it’s a pity that the combined talents of Artur Rubinstein and Philip Dorn were wasted on such juvenilia. Incidentally, the film is over two years old. Perhaps the local renters, too, realised that Frank Borzage, who usually turns gut a box-office success, had this time produced a comparative failure,