clanciai Review of While I Live

While I Live (1947)

A musical problem transcending all human and metaphysical limitations

[9/10 · 27 June 2020]

This film is only 80 minutes long, and yet it makes an impression of being at least 20 minutes longer. Although the action is mainly talk, the intrigue is so crowded with important questions of existence and identity, that the metaphysical issues and problems here almost burst the limits of the dimensions, especially that of time. The first part of the film happens in 1922, when a young oianist and composer (female) happens to a mortal accident, leaving her last compositiion unfinished. The rest of the film happens 25 years later and provides a tremendous intricacy of an existential experiment. The phenomenon can't just be brushed aside, as Christine tries to do away with it, but even if the problem ultimately is resolved by logic and rational therapy, the phenomen and experiment must remain as an unanswered question. You need to se this film several times and will probably still not quite understand it, as there are too many aspects on it to be fathomed and grasped at once, and even if you see it again and again, there will remain unanswered questions. This is a metaphysical phenomenon and nothing else, and only the old,Cornish gardener is competent enough to treat it the right way. It's one of the three great English musical films of the 40s, the others being "Dangerous Moonlight" (with the Warsaw Concerto) and "Cornish Rhapsody" with Stewart Gramger and Margaret Lockwood as the pilot and the pianist. They are all three unique and remarkable for their unsurpassed musical psychology, and this film is actually basically most about the mental strain of a pianist and composer who happens to be a woman. The risk is that you will find the film more fascinating and interesting every time you see it again.