According to award-winning film-maker Tony Palmer, the London Polish Daily newspaper has gone "ape-shit" over the re-release of his dramatised Chopin film, The Strange Case of Delfina Potocka, accusing it of maligning the good name of Chopin/Poland/The Polish Daily. They were planning to interview him tomorrow but cancelled, accusing him of "more or less anything you can think of", Palmer tells me.
The paper was apparently incensed that Palmer's 1999 film accused Chopin of being anti-Semitic, of being a political revolutionary, and that it cast aspersions on the truth of the romance between Chopin and George Sand.
The film focuses on the bizarre lengths that the Polish Communist regime went to control the image of their great musical hero post-1945. According to Palmer, this included the stalking and assassination of a Madame Czernika, whose great-grandmother, Countess Delfina Potocka, had been one of Chopin's lovers, and who was in receipt of a potentially scandalous stash of pornographic and anti-Semitic letters written by Chopin. Strange, dark and, as usual with Palmer, absolutely tantalising, the two-part film is out on DVD in two weeks, just in time for the 1 March 200th anniversary. Don't know about you guys, but I can't wait.
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