Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1945

The Contenders:

Gene Kelly: Anchors Aweigh
Bing Crosby: The Bells of St. Mary’s
Gregory Peck: The Keys of the Kingdom
Ray Milland: The Lost Weekend (winner)
Cornel Wilde: A Song to Remember

Polonaise

Films: A Song to Remember
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin' flatscren.

I can’t claim to have entered A Song to Remember with my normal neutrality. The truth is that I’ve only liked Cornell Wilde in a single film and I haven’t been impressed by Merle Oberon beyond her beauty in anything. A movie that puts them as a romantic pairing is, to me, the bland mating with the wooden, and it’s difficult to work up enthusiasm for that. Fortunately, there’s an interesting historical context to put A Song to Remember in, one that makes this far more interesting than it might have otherwise been.

This is the story of Frederic Chopin, the great Polish composer, best known for his waltzes. Chopin, greatly acclaimed, died young, and A Song to Remember attempts to tell us why. We start with the young Chopin (played as a youth by Maurice Tauzin) and his instructor, Professor Joseph Elsner (Paul Muni). Young Frederic is a talented pianist and even a budding composer before his 12th birthday, but is terribly troubled by the problems of Poland, specifically by Poles being taken into custody by Russian authorities.