Un grand amour de Beethoven (1936)
Directed by Abel Gance

Film Review

In the slew of 'commercial' films that Abel Gance put his name to in the 1930s the one that holds up best today is this passionate but distinctly uneven homage to one of the director's personal heroes, Ludwig van Beethoven.  With far fewer resources at his disposal than he could muster as an enfant prodige of the silent era, Gance's tribute to the great Romantic composer isn't anywhere near as ambitious and groundbreaking as his previous biopic, Napoléon (1927), but he still manages to turn out a work of breathtaking originality and emotional power.  Un grand amour de Beethoven was, arguably, Gance's last great film - not a masterpiece but a worthy celebration of the life and work of one of the immortal masters of music.

The film is often faulted (usually by pedants with nothing better to do with their time) for its lack of historical accuracy.  Far more is known about Beethoven today than was the case at the time Gance made this film.  Indeed, most of what Gance had to go on was speculative or pure fabrication.  To this day, the identity of the composer's 'Immortal Beloved' is a matter of conjecture, and some would hotly dispute Giulietta Guicciardi's claim to this title.  None of this really matters.  Gance's film is not meant to be a factually accurate account of a man's life; rather, it is intended as a personal evocation of his work.  Gance's florid excesses and poetic flights of fancy reflect the intense romanticism of Beethoven's music. The film should be regarded as a poem, not a biographical essay, one that resonates with feeling and uses Beethoven's music to incredibly dramatic effect.

By this time, Abel Gance's penchant for experimentation had dwindled considerably since his glory years in the mid-to-late 1920s, but there are scenes in Un grand amour de Beethoven where the director's innovative flair suddenly twitches into life and hits the spectator between the eyes.  The extent of the composer's crushing desolation upon being rejected by his beloved Giulietta is palpably rendered throughout the sequence in which he withdraws to a windmill standing alone in a barren landscape that is wracked by the elements.  It's a bleakly forbidding overture to the even greater calamity that follows in quick succession: the composer's loss of hearing.  Here Gance uses sound - and the absence of sound - almost as brilliantly as his earlier experiments with montage. 

First there is Beethoven's shocking realisation that he is going deaf, achieved with some eerie sound effects and subjective use of sound.  Then there is the excruciating sense of bereavement of a man who has lost the sense he values most.  As the composer looks out on a rural vista throbbing with life he can hear nothing.  Birds singing, bells ringing, washerwomen chattering - the music of nature has ceased to play for him.  But then memory comes into play, and by recalling these familiar sounds Beethoven gives birth to one of his most famous works: his Pastoral Symphony.  The world is suddenly endowed with a renewed vigour, as if nature is rejoicing in art's triumph over adversity.

Of all the great actors Gance had at his disposal none was as well-suited for the role of Ludwig van Beethoven as Harry Baur, a legend of the French stage who become one of French cinema's most iconic performers in the 1930s.  Baur not only has the stature and charisma to play Beethoven convincingly, he also does a remarkable job of expressing the composer's inner torment and his devotion to his art.  It is a remarkably contained performance and yet it resounds with truth and heartwrenching pathos - without it Gance's film could so easily have been just another overwrought melodrama, bereft of genuine human feeling.  Jany Holt's Giulietta and Annie Ducaux's Therese of Brunswick are convincing portrayals of the most important women in the composer's life, but they remain coldly distant, with none of extraordinary depth of feeling that Baur invests in his tour de force performance.  Jean-Louis Barrault is barely noticed when he shows up towards the end of the film as the composer's wayward nephew.  It was right and proper that Gance should place his name alongside Baur's when he takes the final credit, for this is as much Baur's film as it is his.

Film Synopsis

The composer Ludwig van Beethoven is passionately in love with Juliette Guicciardi, but his love is not requited.  She chooses instead to marry the Count Gallenberg, news which, along with his encroaching deafness, propels Beethoven into a state of depression.  The composer retreats to an old windmill in Heiligenstadt where he remains alone to contemplate his misfortune.  Returning to Vienna, Beethoven finds new love in his beloved Juliette's cousin, Thérèse de Brunswick...