After smash hits with composers Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, director Phil Grabsky has just spent more than four years searching for Fryderyk Chopin. The journey took him from Chopin's birthplace outside Warsaw to his graveside in Paris – still a place of pilgrimage for music lovers. And on the way Grabsky listened to every recorded version of his music that was available. He was stunned at what he found. "I just hadn't realised how well liked he is," says Grabsky, "and really, I'd be hard pressed to say he is less popular than Mozart or Beethoven. There's something about his life story that appeals to a broader demographic."
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Of course Grabsky isn't the first film maker to be taken by Chopin – and we talk about the 1991 rom-com biopic of Chopin starring Hugh Grant and Judy Davis. It centres on the relationship between Chopin - who was then living in Paris - and the notorious French writer Baroness Dupin, who dressed as a man and called herself George Sand.
"Good biopics about creative geniuses are pretty rare and the ones on Chopin are awful," Grabsky suggests with a big laugh. "They always concentrate on the love affair because they think that's all the audience is interested in. Well, there's no doubt you can easily be seduced by this strange relationship between a thin, sickly Polish composer and France's most notorious transvestite, but there's a whole lot more to Chopin than that."
Grabsky's approach to finding his character – and his story – is quite different. "When I start off," he says, "I know I've got about 120 minutes to summarise someone's life and their creative journey within that life. It's not a huge amount of time. To work out what's really important I talk to experts and spend a year with detailed research. We can take for granted that this man is a great composer, so the starting point for me - the thing I really want to know - is why him? Why did this particular little baby, born outside the Polish capital, become perhaps the greatest composer of all time?"
Born in 1810, Chopin was a child prodigy who left Warsaw for Paris when he was 20 and never returned. He suffered from tuberculosis all his life and while living with Sand in 1838, the couple went to Majorca for the winter. It became one of the most notorious periods of Chopin's life - the religious locals hounding the unmarried couple until they took refuge in a monastery.
"Everyone always talks about Chopin's time spent in Majorca," says Grabsky, "and it's a rollicking good story – with him coughing blood and being told he's already dead. But over the course of looking at his entire life, I have to decide how much time it's worth. Yes, its worth a mention, but it's not worth 10 minutes screen time. For me, it's all about deciding what is important. Sometimes making that decision is very tricky, because you also want to make a film that entertains. You don't want the film to be either too wordy or overly worthy."
What really made the decision for Grabsky was Chopin's music – something he wasn't particularly familiar with when he started the search. "Because of the other In Search of films I had built a close relationship with the Orchestra of the eighteenth century – considered the best orchestra in the world for period music," he says. "Four years ago they told me they were going to give a special performance of all of Chopin's orchestral works for the 200th anniversary of his birth. It was going to happen in Warsaw, over one evening, and they asked me if I wanted to film it. I jumped at the chance and organised a five-camera shoot of the whole concert."
Grabsky was totally transformed by the event – and it's the most powerful aspect of the film, the passion of the music performance bringing Chopin's talent to life. "At the end of that concert," he says, "I said to myself I just have to make a film of this guy. The music was absolutely brilliant. I just had to know more about the person who created it."
The other piece of research that adds so much to Grabsky's film is Chopin's letters, excerpts from which are read, giving you a chance to hear Chopin's thoughts and feelings – often witty. "It's one of the greatest misunderstandings about Chopin, " says Grabsky. "Yes, he was sick, physically sick, but it doesn't mean his mind was sickly. When you read the letters it's clear they are very sharp and very funny. He was well known as a great mimic, entertaining his friends and keeping them amused. I think it's all part of being a creative genius."
The years of research culminated for Grabsky with a visit to George Sand's estate at Nohant, where Chopin spent every summer with Sand and her daughter Solange. "Because it' has been kept in the family, the place is as it was in their day," he marvels.
"It's a time-capsule. You see these gorgeously spacious rooms and the dining table and chairs where Chopin and Sand sat, with people like the great romantic painter Delacroix. You can just imagine what you read about in his letters; her writing at night when it was cooler and he up early playing the piano. It was so evocative to film there, to read his writings and listen to the great work he composed during that period of his life. It was really during that visit that I felt I came to know who this extraordinary man was."
In Search Of Chopin screens at Palace Electric and Dendy cinemas from August 23.
