Editing A Song to Remember (section)

==Reception==
''A Song to Remember'' was nominated for several Academy Awards: [[Academy Award for Best Actor|Best Actor in a Leading Role]] (Cornel Wilde), [[Academy Award for Best Cinematography|Best Cinematography, Color]], [[Academy Award for Best Film Editing|Best Film Editing]], [[Academy Award for Best Original Score|Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture]], [[Academy Award for Best Sound|Best Sound, Recording]] ([[John P. Livadary]]), and [[Academy Award for Best Story|Best Writing, Original Story]].<ref name="Oscars1946">{{Cite web|url=http://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1946 |title=The 18th Academy Awards (1946) Nominees and Winners |access-date=2011-08-16|work=oscars.org| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110706093754/http://www.oscars.org/awards/academyawards/legacy/ceremony/18th-winners.html| archive-date= 6 July 2011 | url-status= live}}</ref>

Though Chopin was a true Polish patriot, Vidor highly romanticizes Chopin's patriotism in the film, which was produced during [[World War II]]. He fictionalizes Chopin's relationship with Elsner (who did not really accompany him to Paris) and greatly distorts Chopin's relationship with Sand to produce a "good vs. evil" struggle for Chopin's soul between Elsner and Sand. The script occasionally sounds more like propaganda for wartime self-sacrifice over individualism than like the real story of Chopin's life.

[[Ayn Rand]] was sharply critical of the film, strongly taking the side of the George Sand character as against the Polish nationalist ones – a value judgment diametrically opposite to that taken by the film makers: "George Sand, according to the film, is evil because she provides a beautiful, private retreat where Chopin can live in peace and luxury, because she takes care of his every need, attends to his health, and urges him to forget the world and devote himself exclusively to the work of writing music, which he is desperately eager to do. The young Polish girl, according to the film, is good because she urges Chopin to drop the work that he loves and go out on a concert tour to collect money 'for the people', for a cause that is identified as national or revolutionary or both, and this is supposed to justify everything – so she demands that Chopin renounce his genius, sacrifice his composing and go out to entertain paying audiences – even though he hates concert playing, is ill with tuberculosis and has been warned by the doctors that the strain of a tour will kill him".<ref>The highly critical review of "A Song to Remember" appears in "Journals of Ayn Rand", edited by David Harriman, Plume Books ([[Penguin Group]]), 1999, Ch.10, P.369-370.</ref>

Victor Brown noted that "The breakup of George Sand's relationship with Chopin was for personal reasons completely different from those shown in the film – mainly Chopin's siding with Sand's estranged daughter against her mother. In fact, George Sand was an outspoken supporter of the Polish national cause in her own right, an allegiance which lasted long past the end of the relationship with Chopin. During the [[Revolution of 1848 in France]], George Sand took part in a Polish solidarity demonstration held in Paris on May 15, 1848, calling for the French Army to be sent to liberate Poland".<ref>[[Andre Maurois]], "Lelia - the Life of George Sand" quoted in Victor Brown, "Holywood Films as a Highly Unreliable History Book" in Hilary Kagan (ed.) "Retrospective Essays on Twentieth Century Popular Culture".</ref>

The pianist [[José Iturbi]] played the piano music, and also orchestrated part of the [[Piano Sonata No. 3 (Chopin)|B minor Sonata]] for the scene when Chopin and George Sand arrive in [[Majorca]]. The hands of pianist [[Ervin Nyiregyházi]] are shown playing the piano.