A comfortable, viewer-friendly story of the life of Cornell Wild as composer Frederick Chopin (1810 - 1849), a Polish nationalist who fled to Paris, became all the rage, had a tempestuous affair with the writer George Sand (a woman), and died of tuberculosis. Aside from his music, all Chopin winds up with is the honor of being buried in the same cemetery as Oscar Wilde, though his heart belonged to Poland.
I don't think I'd want to live like the heroes of these Hollywood biographical movies about geniuses. They're visited not only by friends in heaven but fiends from hell, to paraphrase one of Chopin's contemporaries. God, they're always tormented by something and as often as not they die in obscurity.
But what a place Paris must have been during his stay. He met Liszt, de Musset, Delacroix, Balzac, Paganini, Berlioz, Heinrich Heine, and everybody who was anybody. Franz Liszt is shown as a helpful and friendly pianist and composer who knows genius when he sees it. In fact, I -- who know nothing -- have heard he was something of a queer bird who dressed in Bishop's robes and was inclined to tweak the compositions of others when he performed them.
Breaking News!
Liszt was a Hungarian. So was Cornell Wild. Wild was on the fencing team of an Ivy League university. I had occasion to interview all the members of the same university's recent fencing team in 1968 and all of them at the time were dopers and acid heads. The students had taken over the campus. I had to climb over a ten-foot fence to reach the subjects.
And now back to our regular programming.
As far as I'm concerned, George Sand was among the least of these celebs. I don't mind her wearing men's clothes and smoking cigars in public. In fact, that adds a little -- well, let's say I don't mind it.
But she wasn't well liked by some of her contemporaries. The poet Baudelaire wrote of her: "She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women ... The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation."
As played by Merle Oberon, she's a steely eyed dominatrix who feels the artist transcends such worldly concerns as Polish nationalism. The Poles keep rising up against their Russian rulers and getting knocked back down. Her function in the movie, aside from providing evidence that Chopin was straight, was to distract the musical genius from supporting the Polish cause, breaking the hearts of his old friends. In life, I understand she wasn't the abstract aesthete that we see. She was a socialist and disliked Chopin for his association with the wealthy aristocracy.
According to this scenario, Chopin played until he died, donating his money to the Polish resistance. The movie more or less insists that he died BECAUSE he went on a demanding tour. Wild does in fact look increasingly ill. There's a startling shot in which we see his fingers rippling over a keyboard that's suddenly befouled with a bright splotch of blood.
Chopin's music isn't especially difficult -- I mean it's not twelve-tone or anything -- and you can follow melodies in them. That's good because we hear a lot of it. I don't know who is playing the piano but he really rips through some of the early works at warp speed, I guess so as not to tire the audience.
The music counts for a great deal in this film, and deservedly so. The guy was, after all, a real genius.
I don't think I'd want to live like the heroes of these Hollywood biographical movies about geniuses. They're visited not only by friends in heaven but fiends from hell, to paraphrase one of Chopin's contemporaries. God, they're always tormented by something and as often as not they die in obscurity.
But what a place Paris must have been during his stay. He met Liszt, de Musset, Delacroix, Balzac, Paganini, Berlioz, Heinrich Heine, and everybody who was anybody. Franz Liszt is shown as a helpful and friendly pianist and composer who knows genius when he sees it. In fact, I -- who know nothing -- have heard he was something of a queer bird who dressed in Bishop's robes and was inclined to tweak the compositions of others when he performed them.
Breaking News!
Liszt was a Hungarian. So was Cornell Wild. Wild was on the fencing team of an Ivy League university. I had occasion to interview all the members of the same university's recent fencing team in 1968 and all of them at the time were dopers and acid heads. The students had taken over the campus. I had to climb over a ten-foot fence to reach the subjects.
And now back to our regular programming.
As far as I'm concerned, George Sand was among the least of these celebs. I don't mind her wearing men's clothes and smoking cigars in public. In fact, that adds a little -- well, let's say I don't mind it.
But she wasn't well liked by some of her contemporaries. The poet Baudelaire wrote of her: "She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women ... The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation."
As played by Merle Oberon, she's a steely eyed dominatrix who feels the artist transcends such worldly concerns as Polish nationalism. The Poles keep rising up against their Russian rulers and getting knocked back down. Her function in the movie, aside from providing evidence that Chopin was straight, was to distract the musical genius from supporting the Polish cause, breaking the hearts of his old friends. In life, I understand she wasn't the abstract aesthete that we see. She was a socialist and disliked Chopin for his association with the wealthy aristocracy.
According to this scenario, Chopin played until he died, donating his money to the Polish resistance. The movie more or less insists that he died BECAUSE he went on a demanding tour. Wild does in fact look increasingly ill. There's a startling shot in which we see his fingers rippling over a keyboard that's suddenly befouled with a bright splotch of blood.
Chopin's music isn't especially difficult -- I mean it's not twelve-tone or anything -- and you can follow melodies in them. That's good because we hear a lot of it. I don't know who is playing the piano but he really rips through some of the early works at warp speed, I guess so as not to tire the audience.
The music counts for a great deal in this film, and deservedly so. The guy was, after all, a real genius.