1h 57min | Drama, Musical, Romance | 2 December 1946 | Color
Director: Frank Borzage
Stars: Philip Dorn, Catherine McLeod, Bill Carter, Maria Ouspenskaya, Felix Bressart.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038629/
Watched online, good print.
14 classical pieces listed in Soundtracks; no idea which were played in full, or just a sample, or anything in between. I can tell you this: we get an overdose of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor. And every time is starts, I think of Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell in The Seven Year Itch ('55).
I like MO very, very much. The last time I mentioned her, my complaint was that she was gone from the story too soon. She's around for a lot of this one. She makes only 2 more films after this, and dies in '49 at age 73.
PD is good at being the arrogant master teacher, but I think his conducting was poor: arms moving too broadly when the music was quiet. His role had him say something like "Music is not woman. Music is man." This leads me to ask why he would invest years in a solo woman student. Spoiler: he retracts his assertion at the end of the movie.
Only 9 of the last 250 musicals have been from Republic. I think this is the first one in color. And it's really Technicolor, with Natalie Kalmus as the required consultant.
Republic, dir. Borzage; 6+
