I usually like this sort of thing (overwrought melodrama based on long-forgotten bestseller), and Phyllis Calvert's name is one that I know well from English cinema of the era. But this film began to irritate me more and more as it went on.
Partly I think there is just too much in it, an inherent problem with adaptations from novels: either the first or the second half could have stood as a separate film on its own, but tied together they are just too much. Partly I think the problem lay with the source material, as Chris becomes less and less sympathetic, and Kate's unthinking allegiance to him starts to look like an exercise in pathetic self-deception rather than the undying love which it ought to represent. And the final development by which we are supposed to believe that he is a musical genius after all when not being stifled by the deep trauma of his wife's money(!) felt a bit forced. (It would have helped if I had been able to detect any difference between the supposedly derivative and unoriginal concerto, and the "New England Symphony": both sound equally melodious to my uneducated ear!) Personally I feel that it might have been more interesting for Chris to discover in Paris, like "Little Women"'s Laurie in Italy, that talent is not necessarily genius and that early promise is no guarantee of success... however, that's an issue with the novel's plot and no reflection upon the film itself. Rissa's virtually incestuous obsession could also have done with more development and/or clarification, as could the role of Jake, who funds Chris without sympathising with him, and Jake's hinted-at relationship with Kate.
Technically there is nothing wrong with the film (save perhaps a railway scene with the arrival of what is a blatantly non-functional train). It has all the Hollywood production values of what was a big-budget picture for Universal: a high-end musical score, inventive camera handling (for example, we don't actually get to see Chris's face until the moment that he awakes from his coma, although he is the centre of the dialogue and action up to that point), director Siodmak's trademark use of light and shadow, and set-piece scenes with scores of extras in period costume. I just found my disbelief and hence tolerance for the soap-opera antics slipping throughout; the turnaround by which Chris is perceived/portrayed as the sensitive, persecuted protagonist escaping family oppression in the first half only to reappear as a self-pitying failure in the second half could have been a striking development, but instead it came over as rather annoying. As an earlier reviewer says, Gainsborough Films had done this sort of thing more effectively with Phyllis Calvert in England.
John Abbott turns in a memorable performance as the music critic Liebermann, and Ella Raines is notable as the tormented Rissa. As a contemporary reviewer put it in the "Monthly Film Bulletin" for 1947, "the rest of the cast do all that is expected of them", which is no reflection upon the actors concerned.
Partly I think there is just too much in it, an inherent problem with adaptations from novels: either the first or the second half could have stood as a separate film on its own, but tied together they are just too much. Partly I think the problem lay with the source material, as Chris becomes less and less sympathetic, and Kate's unthinking allegiance to him starts to look like an exercise in pathetic self-deception rather than the undying love which it ought to represent. And the final development by which we are supposed to believe that he is a musical genius after all when not being stifled by the deep trauma of his wife's money(!) felt a bit forced. (It would have helped if I had been able to detect any difference between the supposedly derivative and unoriginal concerto, and the "New England Symphony": both sound equally melodious to my uneducated ear!) Personally I feel that it might have been more interesting for Chris to discover in Paris, like "Little Women"'s Laurie in Italy, that talent is not necessarily genius and that early promise is no guarantee of success... however, that's an issue with the novel's plot and no reflection upon the film itself. Rissa's virtually incestuous obsession could also have done with more development and/or clarification, as could the role of Jake, who funds Chris without sympathising with him, and Jake's hinted-at relationship with Kate.
Technically there is nothing wrong with the film (save perhaps a railway scene with the arrival of what is a blatantly non-functional train). It has all the Hollywood production values of what was a big-budget picture for Universal: a high-end musical score, inventive camera handling (for example, we don't actually get to see Chris's face until the moment that he awakes from his coma, although he is the centre of the dialogue and action up to that point), director Siodmak's trademark use of light and shadow, and set-piece scenes with scores of extras in period costume. I just found my disbelief and hence tolerance for the soap-opera antics slipping throughout; the turnaround by which Chris is perceived/portrayed as the sensitive, persecuted protagonist escaping family oppression in the first half only to reappear as a self-pitying failure in the second half could have been a striking development, but instead it came over as rather annoying. As an earlier reviewer says, Gainsborough Films had done this sort of thing more effectively with Phyllis Calvert in England.
John Abbott turns in a memorable performance as the music critic Liebermann, and Ella Raines is notable as the tormented Rissa. As a contemporary reviewer put it in the "Monthly Film Bulletin" for 1947, "the rest of the cast do all that is expected of them", which is no reflection upon the actors concerned.
