The team of Robert Wright and Chet Forrest adapted the music of Edvard Grieg
into a biographical operetta as they later did for Alexander Borodin in Kismet and
it ran on Broadway for 860 performances in 1944-46.
In many ways the film shows imagination. The location cinematography in Norway and Denmark is spectacular and obviously influenced by the Sound Of
Music as are the musical numbers. There's an animated sequence involving In
The Hall Of The Mountain King that is most imaginative.
But the pace is that of escargot. The actors get no real direction at all. Some
movie scene stealers like Edward G. Robinson and Oscar Homolka and Robert
Morley have their own bag of tricks which are used.
The plot is simply promising composer Edvard Grieg is forbidden marriage to
Christina Schollin by her rich dad Robert Morley. He marries Florence Henderson who sings well and probably was hoping she'd break into the big
screen stardom after years on the Brady Bunch. The bad reviews Song Of Norway got killed any chance of that. Schollin who never married becomes
Grieg's patron instead.
Toralv Maurstad is a big name in Norwegian cinema. But this also killed his
career for international stardom.
But if you like the music of Grieg, Song of Norway is for you.
