Night Song (1947)

This is an interesting musical experiment on film. The night song refers to a composer creating music as a blind man, played by Dana Andrews, who makes it convincing enough. Merle Oberon is the rich San Francisco sponsor who discovers him and decides to do something about his blindness. She is always a marvel of beauty and here better than ever. Ethel Barrymore plays her advisory aunt and contributes a great deal to the charm of the film, but the real asset is Hoagy Carmichael as the blind composer's caretaker and fellow musician, who is an ornament to the film indeed, like he was in "To Have and Have Not", making an unforgettable solo number on the way. It's a beautiful film crowned by the performance of Artur Rubinstein as the pianist in the final concerto, impressing as ever, and the music isn't bad either. What has raised objections is the plot. Of course it's implausible, a blind man can never play faultlessly and improvise at random in perfect performances just like that, and Merle Oberon's deceit is bound to fail. The question is, which you will wonder throughout the film, what will happen when the deceit is discovered, and how will it happen? It's bound to happen, but the film actually manages to give it a smooth and felicitous turn, and you can't object against the marvellous development of the most impossible plot possible. In brief, it's film magic making it all possible although it couldn't be.