the audience applauded

Sadly Over-hyped

Best movie ever!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

In this biopic of Robert Schumann, Paul Henreid plays the struggling pianist and Katharine Hepburn plays his wife, also a pianist. While Paul felt fine about using a hand double during the musical scenes, Kate trained so that she would be believable as a piano player. Not only do you see her playing during the scenes, but you actually hear her, too! Usually, music is dubbed over, but Kate was so flawless in her playing that director Clarence Brown opted to let audiences hear her music. So, if you want to see Katharine Hepburn showing an enormous amount of musical talent, this is the movie for you! Robert Walker costars as Johannes Brahms, as well as Henry Daniell as Franz Liszt. It's an interesting story to see the three famous musicians together, but the main focus of the plot is the Schumanns. Kate puts her career on hold to give her full support to Paul as he pursues his musical dreams, but will the pressure prove to be too much for him? You'll have to watch the film, or know your history, to find out.My favorite scene in the film is during one of Katharine Hepburn's concerts. There she is, in a beautiful ball gown, playing a slow concerto to hundreds of people in a theater, when a nurse shows herself in the wings and tries to get Kate's attention. She holds up Kate's newborn baby, indicating that the child is hungry and needs food from Mama. Kate immediately speeds up the piano concerto, to the audience's confusion and entertainment, so that she can finish the piece as quickly as possible and attend to her baby. It's hilarious and adorable. If you like musical movies, or if you found that scene too cute to resist, go ahead and rent Song of Love. It probably won't be your all-time favorite Katharine Hepburn movie, but it's pretty good.

This fascinating, but incredibly inaccurate portrayal of Robert Schumann and his wife Clara Wieck Schuman was done with the family trade in mind for MGM. The real story would never have made it to the screen in those days.For one thing when Schumann started courting Clara Wieck over the objections of her father, played here by Leo G. Carroll, Clara was only 15 years old. Schumann had been going out with a 16 year old girl before Clara, but dumped her for Clara. It wasn't just the fact that Schumann was a social climber that Professor Wieck objected. Katharine Hepburn was a good choice as an adult Clara, but obviously she was not going to play teenagers at that stage of her life. The madness that claimed Schumann we now deduce as being syphilitic in origin. Right around the time this film came out it claimed another real life victim, one Al Capone. But obviously we dare not talk about this while the Code is firmly in place.I will say Paul Henreid was fine as the tortured genius Robert Schumann, he does the best acting in the film. There were a few snickers from some when Robert Walker was cast as Johannes Brahms who studied with Schumann. But Brahms came to Schumann when he was in his early twenties although someone not quite so American as Walker might have been a better choice.Song Of Love is no better or worse than a lot of composer biographies, either classical or popular. The audience comes to hear the music and they heard the piano stylings of Artur Rubinstein. Those whose tastes run to the classical would have sat through any kind of story to hear Rubinstein.The other good thing about the film and why it must have been marketed for the family trade were the kids. Schuman and Clara had quite a little tribe and their escapades look like a German version of the Brady Bunch.If you like classical music and Katharine Hepburn than I would recommend Song Of Love.

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.

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.