*That’s* not Chopin!!!  Here he is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNzwcFihh5I

http://www.amazon.com/Song-Remember-Paul-Muni/dp/630242500X

Editorial Review

The short life and passionate music of romantic composer Frédéric Chopin provide the foundations for this 1945 drama, which proved influential in its gaudy, undeniably watchable formula of historical exaggeration and shrewdly simplified motives for its principals. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Cornel Wilde presents the Polish native as a passionate nationalist driven by his love of his native country and his hatred of its czarist regime, a thematic focus that can be forgiven in light of the political backdrop at the time of the production. Already a prodigy in his native land, where he’s mentored by a shamelessly scenery-chewing Paul Muni as Professor Elsner, Chopin flees to Paris where his flashing eyes, dark nimbus of curls, and florid technique earn him stardom, while his involvement with the writer George Sand (a beautiful Merle Oberon, even when draped in then-provocatively masculine garb) introduces a romantic crescendo. Still, the tortured pianist-composer pines for his homeland, frets about its political fate, and begins to wither under the rigors of his new career as ur-superstar; in a typically over-the-top but riveting image, we see drops of blood spatter across the keyboard as he thunders through a recital, gallantly ignoring his failing health to spread his music and, by extension, awareness of Poland’s fate. Numerous subsequent musical dramas (including two more Song-titled biographies from the same studio) would ply a similar mix of grand gestures and larger-than-life emotions, yet the most interesting comparison to be made is with 1991’s Impromptu, a more acerbic spin through the Sand/Chopin affair (and the Parisian demimonde including Alfred DeMusset, Franz Liszt, and Eugene Delacroix) directed by frequent Stephen Sondheim collaborator James Lapine. --Sam Sutherland

If you zoom the photo of George Sand on this page:
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/sand_g.html

you’ll see her dress, too, was in fine taste.  Also that she didn’t look like Merle Oberon. : )

George Sand became my first female role model, passionately so, when I read her biography entitled Lelia, taken from the title of her first published book.  She would certainly be considered a feminist, and though it went over my head at the time, she was also a socialist.  What so fascinated me about her was her active engagement with her world--its politics and its arts--writing newspaper columns as well as novels and plays and associating with leading figures of the day.  She was also a good mother and grandmother, and I noted she was the only female on a list of super high IQ people from the past that circulated on the web a few years ago.

I wasn’t making light of Chopin or his music when I posted the link to the movie.  Paul Muni and Nina Foch, the true idealist, faithful friends, were both Jews, of course, and the Chopin/Sand relationship was fictionalized for dramatic effect.  But the film was saturated with Chopin’s music, which overshadowed all the rest.

The demise of good tailoring in America occurred during the 60s.  Although much attention was paid to hemlines, the most symbolic change was in the shoulders, which shifted from fitted to drooping, signifying the corresponding change in society from idealism to mediocrity.  I read once that it was a reaction to the militaristic mindset of the war years.  I doubt that’s all it was.

MOB