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6.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Valse brillante de Chopin remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have exactly six minutes to spare today, yes, Valse brillante de Chopin is absolutely worth a quick look.
Piano lovers and vintage camera nerds will find it pretty neat, but if you want a real story with characters, you're gonna hate this.
It is basically a music video from 1936. The famous director Max Ophüls just wanted to see how a camera could "dance" along with classical music.
The pianist here is Alexander Brailowsky. His hands move so incredibly fast they get blurry on the old film stock.
There is this one shot where the camera swoops right under the piano lid. It feels almost illegal for the 1930s, like the camera is spying on the metal strings.
I watched this right after checking out some other old shorts like The Tailor, and the differnce in energy is just wild.
Ophüls simply couldn't keep his camera still, even when just filming a guy sitting at a bench.
The lighting is a bit of a mess though. You can see some weird, distracting shadows on the back wall that clearly weren't planned.
And the audio has that scratchy, old-record hiss. I actually kind of dig it, because it makes the whole thing feel like a little ghost haunting your screen. 👻
At one point, the camera zooms in super close on Brailowsky's face. He looks so intensely serious, almost like he's mad at the piano keys.
Then we get a reflection of his fingers in the polished wood of the piano. It is so simple but it looks incredibly cool.
Sometimes the editing gets a little jumpy. A couple of the cuts feel like the editor just snipped the film with kitchen scissors and hoped for the best.
It's greatest strength is that it doesn't try to be some grand masterpiece.
It is just a very short, cool experiment from a director who loved to push boundaries.