This film was actually made in 1942 by Continental Films, a German-owned company set up by Nazi propaganda boss Goebbels. He wanted the studio to produce light entertainment films to keep the French population quiet during the war. When he saw this film he was outraged because he believed it was really a disguised appeal for French patriotism, so he arranged for it to be banned. That probably saved the film from disappearing altogether, because most of the films made under the Occupation were detested and banned after the war as symbols of collaboration with the Nazis. About the only film made for the studio which is respected today is the brilliant Le Corbeau by Clouzot.

I'm not really qualified to criticize this entry on grounds of accuracy as my knowledge of Hector Berlioz himself, the musical climate in which he was active and the period in general leaves much to be desired but the same, alas, can be said for this film in terms of the grounds on which I do feel more or less qualified to venture an opinion i.e. writing, acting, direction etc. Christian Jaques was more at home in other genres and whilst Jean-Louis Barrault was a fine actor - and would score heavily three years later in Les Enfants du paradis - he seems ill at ease in the main role. Neither Catherine Fonteney, Bernard Blier or Jules Berry are exactly chopped live but even then can do little to rescue this.

In this age, the French movie studios produced a lot of low-budget biographical movies, most of which are very bad. La Symphonie Fantastique, about composer Hector Berlioz, is no exception: bad acting, sloppy backgrounds, pseudo-drama, and worst of all total inaccuracy. Persons that never existed play a lead role, and important people are never mentioned at all. You could argue that this isn't a documentary, but a historical drama, but the movie does announce itself as a biography and as far as 'drama' is concerned, there's more drama in a bucket of dying fish.

Which is a shame, not just for the fish but also for the drama: the life of Hector Berlioz, as he himself described it in his Memoirs, is very romantic and dramatic. A more modern approach could become a major success. Who bites?