Product Details

• Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Paul Henreid, Robert Walker, Henry Daniell, Leo G. Carroll
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 630220898X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,146 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A GREAT movie, December 27, 1999

By 

Pat (El Paso, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Song of Love [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Song of Love is poignant and tender with excellent acting and story. Katharine Hepburn makes the character Clara Schumann believable (as with all Hepburn's roles). The story is true to life and is funny and touching at the same time. This not an action movie, however, but it is a great love story. My being a musician, the music was great, but maybe I'm a little partial to Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms. This movie sticks to the facts of Clara Schumann's life. It introduced me to two fantastic women, Katharine Hepburn and Clara Schumann. It remains one of my all-time favorites (I have seen it five times). If you're going to buy Song of Love, go for it.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotional. Makes you a fan of classical music., July 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Song of Love [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I first saw this movie on TNT in 1994. I have been searching for the title for years. This movie is an emotional, moving story of madness, and undying love between Schumann, Clara, his wife ,and Brahms. It is what first turned me on to classical music.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hepburn stars in Hollywood musical bio-pic, October 4, 2000

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Song of Love [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Ironically, in the film where Katharine Hepburn plays a subservient wife her character, Clara Wieck Schumann, is one of the most talented women she ever played in her career. Clara was a brilliant pianist, performing the works of Franz Liszt (Henry Daniell), but goes her father's objections to marry the struggling composer Robert Schumann (Paul Henreid). Clara retires and raises seven children, totally dedicated to her family. However, Schumann is unable to deal with his lack of success. After her husband breaks down during a concert performing the Cantata from his version of "Faust," Clara has him committed to an asylum. After his death, she returns to the concert stage to share her husband's music with the world.

There is also a strong soap opera element in that young Johannus Brahms (Robert Walker) comes to live with the Schumanns, falls in love with Clara, and even proposed to her after Robert dies. Without spending a lot of time reading about the lives of the Great Composers, it is my understanding that this particular romantic plot twist did not really happen. But then you know how Hollywood feels about being historically accurate.

"Song of Love" opens with Clara playing the dazzling finale from Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2. The actual piano playing for the film was performed by Artur Rubinstein. Hepburn worked daily with one of his pupils, pianist Laura Dubman, on fundamentals and techniques down to the distinctive hand posture for playing the piano used during that period. This Meryl Streep like devotion to the details paid off brilliantly and the illusion that Hepburn is actually playing is quite impressive.

Even if she were not played by Katharine Hepburn, I end up feeling it is rather difficult to really accept Clara throwing away her career for the man she loves. Her love of music is as deep as Schumann's and she clearly has the respect of the musical community, with the notable exception of her stern taskmaster father (Leo G. Carroll). Even a subdued Hepburn seems to be more than a match for the men in this movie, although as portrayed in the film Schumann and Brahms are a pretty clueless pair. The audience ends up identifying with Liszt, who you get the feeling always knows how talented the lesser beings really are in this story.

In one of those delightful Hollywood twists of fate, Robert Walker, who played Hepburn's son in her previous film "Sea of Grass," plays young Brahms. Based on the play by Bernard Schubert and Mario Silva, the film had four scenarists, which perhaps explains the unevenness of the script. Director Clarence Brown does a fine job, but this is one of those sanitized biographies that Hollywood loved to produced in those days, where you only get a taste of the emotion turmoil of Clara Wieck Schumann's life. Note: There is a photogrraph of Hepburn as Clara available around here.