Mystery Of Chopin, The / The Strange Case Of Delphina Potocka DVD – Valentina Igoshina, Penelope Wilton 

Tony Palmer’s The Mystery of Chopin combines two short films about the composer. In the late 1940s, a newly Communist Poland needs its national heroes to be squeaky clean: The Strange Case of Delphina Potocka documents the persecution and mysterious death of Paulina who claimed to own letters showing Chopin to be a viciously anti-Semitic egomaniac; Penelope Wilton is stunning as the dogged, and possibly deranged, Paulina and John Shrapnel, Corin Redgrave, John Bird and John Fortuneare memorable as the men who persecute her to protect Chopin’s good name. These scenes are shot in a gritty black and white; colour is reserved for the dreamy and passionate scenes in which a brooding Paul Rhys moves through pastoral and revolutionary landscapes as Chopin and the inserted moments of Valentina Igoshina playing the music which is Chopin’s true legacy. In the other film, Igoshina plays a selection of the standard works featured in excerpts in the film; she is a technically adroit performer, keen on the poetry of the work–but Palmer’s camera is at times a little too in love with her luminous good looks. On the DVD: The DVD has subtitles in German, French and Spanish; the sound quality is excellent–the piano recital has a particularly fine acoustic. –Roz Kaveney