AllMovie

Amateur and heavy-handed, this biography of the Hungarian composer of operettas Imre Kalman is informative but at the same time flat and unrealistic in its portrayal of human interactions. Kalman is already a musical prodigy at the age of four but grows up to be trained as a lawyer -- apparently as a much more sensible career. Jurisprudence lost an attorney when Kalman turned exclusively to music, becoming successful and marrying his first wife, a talented actress. When she dies 20 years later, the composer remarries and is living in Vienna just as fascism is on the rise in Europe. Refusing to write for the Third Reich as Hitler requested, the Jewish Kalman emigrates to the U.S. with his wife. He died in Paris in 1953.