Canto d'amore

Why this film is not better regarded by critics I cannot fathom. It features truly sublime direction by Clarence Brown (Orson Welles would be proud of some of those tracking shots), and four brilliant performances by Katharine Hepburn, Robert Walker, Paul Henreid and Henry Daniell. The plot is simple, even slight, but the film is really about music, and is soaked in the exquisite sounds of Schumann and Brahms (played I believe by Arthur Rubinstein). Hepburn and Daniell play piano with utter conviction - surely both actors had some knowledge of the instrument. Excellent art direction and superb cinematography make the film glow visually as well as aurally.

It's all about love - between people and for music. This is a unique film for its time - a true mood piece, in which the divine music allows you to experience the love felt by the characters. Don't sit back and think - allow the images and the sounds to take you away. Clarence Brown was a brilliant director - one of the best Hollywood ever produced. He knows exactly how to move an audience with the sheer beauty of his images and the power of music. Never has this ability been more evident than in SONG OF LOVE, which I venture to describe as a masterpiece.

SONG OF LOVE is a tastefully romanticized biography of the Schumanns (Clara and Robert), as portrayed by KATHARINE HEPBURN and PAUL HENRIED, in a glossy tribute to their classical music. Their life changes when they take in a boarder/student by the name of Brahms, ROBERT WALKER, who immediately falls in love with Clara.

While she makes a successful career as a pianist, her husband is less successful in pursuing his serious work as a composer. The story chronicles the highs and lows of their marriage as they struggle to raise seven or eight children while juggling their professional lives. Whether the romantic angle with Brahms falling deeply in love with Clara is accurate or not, I don't know. I'll have to read more about them to get the full picture, but it makes for an interesting romantic drama with lots of classical music, courtesy of Rubenstein at the piano.

An unusual film for Katharine Hepburn, who does beautifully at the keyboard looking as though she's really playing the instrument, as well as Henry Daniell as Franz Liszt who is quite adept at the fingering.

Good performances throughout, but I suspect that it's a film for classical music lovers only.

Katherine Hepburn would seem ideally cast to play a wildly talented woman (Clara Wieck was one of the great 19th-century pianists, an amazing feat in an era when women were not supposed to have "careers") who has to break away from her father to lead her own life.

In some ways, Katherine Hepburn's performance as Clara Wieck is one of her best, simply because she has relatively weak material to work with, and her ability to give it life becomes apparent -- she brings real passion to what, from another performer's mouth, would sound silly. Ditto for Robert Walker, whose Brahms is self-assured and even a bit wise-ass at times, not far-removed from the real Brahms. Both take trite and thrice-heard dialog and give it imaginative treatment.

"Song of Love" makes lavish use of Schumann's music (mostly piano -- his orchestral works aren't even acknowledged), with outstanding performances by an uncredited pianist, and the MGM house orchestra conducted by William Steinberg, who went on to conduct the Pittsburgh Symphony. The performances are _so_ good, I'd like to hear the complete versions (if there were any) apart from the film.

Amazingly, Hepburn, Henreid, Walker, and Daniell all had some degree of piano-playing skill, and we see them actually tickling the ivories in a convincing fashion. (Some of the playing appears to be undercranked, so it looks as if Clara's or Franz's fingers are flying across the keys. The film implies that Clara was nearly as good a pianist as Liszt.)

Dramatically, the film is all over the place, with good scenes (Wieck pere telling Bob why he shouldn't marry Clara, Clara mouthing off to Liszt about his interference) followed by cutesy Hollywood creations (Clara encouraging Bob & John to kill a chicken for New Year's Eve dinner). The movie's principal failing is its shortness -- we never see Bob & Clara actually falling in love -- and the inability to move Bob past the point of The Tortured Composer Without Recognition Suffering From Mental Illness Of An Unidentified Sort. Bob & Clara had an intense sex life (Clara marked her journal to indicate when they had sex -- there are a _lot_ of marks), and the film suffers (as, oddly, "Brokeback Mountain" does) from the lack of an intense and passionate scene of love-making. There are times when sexual explicitness /is/ appropriate.

As a classical-music lover, I bring an interest and prejudice to this film the average viewer lacks. (I cried at a few spots, mostly because of my fondness for the Schumann-Ruckert "Widmung", which gets heavy use.) How they will react to this film, I don't know. But it's worth seeing to hear the excellent music and to see how fine actors handle less-than-great material.

The "triangle" among Bob & Clara & John is a fascinating subject and perhaps an adventurous filmmaker will someday create an "Amadeus"-like film about it. In the meantime, you can enjoy Jan Swafford's excellent biography of Brahms.

With the word "song" appearing in the title, this must be another Hollywood biopic about a famous composer: in fact, we get no fewer than 3 here (Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms and, once again, Franz Liszt), as well as an accomplished female pianist (Clara Wieck, later Schumann)! Being an MGM production and starring Katharine Hepburn to boot, I was prepared for the worst – but I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the result; mind you, I love Hepburn's classic comedies with Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy – yet, given her predilection for theatricality, I tend to approach her dramatic work with less enthusiasm!

The acting is fine all around, but I feel that the honors in this case should go to the consistently underrated Paul Henreid: he tackles the most difficult role as Schumann – whose lack of personal success, and being essentially forced to live in the shadow of his wife and depending financially on her own career, gives him severe bouts of melancholia (brought about by the persistent hearing of one particular dissonant note) which even lead to an attempted suicide and ultimately land the composer in a mental institution (though history tells us this isolation was self-imposed)! At this time, Hollywood was not yet rooted in the concept of rewarding actors playing these type of challenging parts (especially when they are based on real figures), so Henreid's performance – indeed, the whole film – was ignored by Academy voters: another category where it ought to have been a sure-fire consideration was the black-and-white cinematography (back then, color films were separately judged) in view of the exquisite lighting, courtesy of Harry Stradling, throughout.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: the picture opens on a concert given by Clara where she is constantly being corrected by her stern father (Leo G. Carroll) sitting right behind her! She rebels, however, when – instead of the usual encore – she opts to play a piece by a new composer, Schumann, with Caroll forced to swallow his pride since it particularly pleases the royalty in attendance! After the performance, though, he and Henreid (whom the older man had taken in as a student) exchange harsh words (since the latter apparently intends marrying his mentor's daughter) and, when Schumann leaves, Clara goes with him! Cut to 10 years and 7(!) children later, Brahms (Robert Walker) arrives on the scene – pretty much a younger version of Schumann himself, and who is platonically doted on by both husband and wife. That said, it turns out that he harbors feelings for Clara, and which emerge the more Schumann retreats into himself on account of his condition (reaching its zenith during his conducting of the self-penned opera "Faust" in concert form). For the record, Liszt (Henry Daniell) had been instrumental in securing its production, in an effort to help the Schumanns' impecunious situation (the husband had already been humiliated by seeing Hepburn forced to resume performing after several years but, while the result proves a resounding success so that her agent hopes for a run of such concerts, she is adamant that it be for a one-time engagement only, just so the family can rise above water financially!).

Still, unable to hold himself back any longer, Brahms decides to leave the Schumanns' residence. Following Robert's death, his own career flourishes but, learning of Clara's secluded life, he visits her and, naturally, hopes to fill in the blank of both husband and father (he had been especially close with one of their girls, which the young man had even seen through a case of measles), yet the now-ageing lady tells him that she is still Mrs. Schumann, at which he gracefully retreats…but not before telling her that, if her love for her husband is still so passionate, she should do her utmost to bring his music to the world! The film, then, ends with Clara (towards the end of her own life) sitting down at the piano before vast audiences once again and opting to play the very composition that had received the approval of the present King (who was no more than a boy back when we first heard it!) against her father's better judgment.

SONG OF LOVE has all the ingredients for a sophisticated entertainment – comedy (especially involving the antics of the Schumanns' cantankerous old nanny), drama, romance, child interest and, of course, classical music (that said, even if this is copious throughout and involves all four musically-inclined protagonists, it is hardly memorable in comparison to the recently-viewed A SONG TO REMEMBER {1945}, about Frederic Chopin, and SONG WITHOUT END: THE STORY OF FRANZ LISZT {1960}) – and it is all tastefully handled by veteran Brown, enough to make it palatable for most of its somewhat overgenerous 118 minutes. Although the movie has now been officially released on DVD-R via the "Warner Archives" collection, the copy I acquired is plagued by intermittent wobbliness in the picture (despite being sourced from a TCM transmission).

This was produced as a sincere attempt to tell the story of the relationship between composer Robert Schumann, his wife Clara, and an up-and-coming youngster, Johannes Brahms.

The story is largely a fictionalized version of the true tale. According to their letters, Clara's feelings for the young Brahms were more of a motherly than a romantic nature. Brahms did indeed feel a great deal for Clara, but he knew the parameters of their relationship and accepted them. The portrayal of Robert in this film is the worst written and least accurate, probably accounting for Henreid's pallid performance. Brahms was only one of the young male talents that Robert befriended and aided, while Clara looked the other way. We now know too that Robert's illness and cause of death was most likely the ravages of syphilis. The picture skirts the issue and never really makes clear what is wrong with him.

The portrayal of the resourceful and strong-willed Clara is more accurate, and Hepburn is a good casting choice, though on the surface an unlikely one, and the best part of the picture is the portrayal of the boisterous Schumann household, which she essentially heads, leaving her husband free to pursue his own interests and talents. And after Robert's death, the real Clara did indeed devote her life to preserving his legacy.

This film is not a bad one, though the reverential way these three people are treated, and the stilted dialogue written for them, gets in the way. Walker looks so much like the portraits of the young Brahms, especially Brahms in his thirties, that it's uncanny.

The choice of Artur Rubenstein to play all of the solo piano pieces on the soundtrack is a puzzling one, as he makes little attempt to differentiate between the styles of playing of the different characters. And Rubenstein was never a particularly strong player of Brahms and Schumann. His playing of Liszt is much better.