Bored with playing the classics, a young Frédéric Chopin (Maurice Tauzin), surprises his piano teacher, Joseph Elsner (Paul Muni), with a waltz the young prodigy composed himself.  Recognizing his talent, Elsner wants to move Chopin from his poor home in war-torn Poland to France where he can become a concert pianist.  As an adult, Chopin (Cornel Wilde) becomes involved with the underground Polish resistance movement and eventually needs to flee the country.  Paris is the solution, so he and Elsner make their journey west to this haven for artists where Chopin will find that success often comes with a high price to pay. 

Released by Columbia Pictures in 1945, Charles Vidor’s A Song to Remember serves as a loose biopic of the famed composer Frédéric Chopin.  Wilde gives an incredibly soft performance in what should be the lead role.  He seems like a wholly innocent bystander through the majority of the 113-minute film.  His wide-eyed, puppy dog look helps us sympathize with Chopin and makes up for the shortcomings of the script.   

The film does help to contextualize a variety of oft heard pieces in a way that not only helps to instill emotion into the audience but also works to drive the scenes themselves.  The film contains multiple long sequences involving music, but it never drives the narrative to a halt.  The camera is always moving through the crowd and letting us in on their conversations. 

While this choice helps us stay invested in the film, it creates the structure for a very weak biopic.  An argument can easily be made that Chopin takes the backseat in A Song to Remember, and that the film more closely follows Elsner’s arc as the teacher who will stop at nothing to get his pupil in front of an audience.  Unfortunately, Muni gives an over-the-top theatrical performance which is understandable for an actor with roots in Broadway, but his playing to the cheap seats approach does not translate well to the screen.  The hubris he brings to Elsner, though this may come more from Sidney Buchman’s script, makes him a prickly entry point into the story.  More so, it seems like he is treating this role as a comedy which makes his performance even more jarring in the context of the dramatic narrative. 

Muni’s performance is not the only thing that belongs on a stage; the camera movement itself is very reminiscent as if you were watching the action on a live Broadway stage.  The set design and costuming throughout the film are all beautifully done.  The various chambers and halls in which Chopin finds himself are gorgeously dressed, and the Technicolor finishing helps to highlight the elegance and excess of the time.  A Song to Remember functions better as a showcase for the production design and the beauty of Technicolor than as a biopic for Chopin.  And in that sense, it is a very visually exciting film to watch as it takes all those bright and vibrant colors from the sweeping epics or whimsical fantasies of the time and brings them indoors. 

Getting back to the story the film does tell, we find Chopin in the center of a battle for his future being waged between his teacher and Georges Sand (Merle Oberon), the French novelist.  Deeply in love with her, Chopin agrees to move with Sand to the island of Majorca where he can focus on his compositions.  It is here that Chopin composes many of his greatest works, and as he sends them back to Paris, Elsner’s jealousy grows. 

Finally, Chopin is forced to decide; will he keep composing his works in solitude or go on tour to raise money for the Polish people suffering under Russian rule. On one side is Sand who has spent her time pushing him to keep writing more works, and on the other side is Elsner who has always treated Chopin like a suited circus monkey with the cymbals whose only purpose is to entertain on demand.  The biggest problem with this setup is that the film, up until this moment, has never given Chopin the power to drive the narrative because he was always being worked upon by the other characters in the scene.  When Chopin finally decides for himself what it is he will do, it feels unearned because we can see the manipulation behind that decision by the people he trusts. But maybe that is the whole point of the film, the exploitation of art – of music – and how we view it as an everyday commodity and not an emotional labor of love by the artists that create the soundtrack to our lives.