Columbia's "A Song to Remember" combines lush technicolor with the music of Frederic Chopin in a pleasant, if unauthentic, representation of the famous pianist-composer's life.

All the familiar Chopin waltzes, preludes, and nocturnes, together with some of the less well-worn pieces--nearly two dozen works in all--are woven into the story of a man torn between love for a woman and love for country; and all are brilliantly played by Jose Iturhi.

If you don't care for Chopin, there is Merle Oberon, although as the female lead she does not quite rise to the occasion, and leaves you feeling somehow that perhaps Botte Davis would have been a happier choice in the casting. She is still as cold and beautiful as ever, but her woodiness hampers her attempt to suggest the real magnetism of George Sand.

The canvas is broad, shifting from Chopin's native Poland to Paris or to George Sand's island retreat at Minorca, and finally to the various capitals of Europe, when the fever-racked young composer breaks the hypnotic spell cast over him by the iron-willed, amorous Sand and sets out on a suicidal concert tour to raise money to help his people in an uprising against the Czar. Paraded across the background in a rather ludicrous attempt at historical realism are such figures as De Musset, Balzac, Pagnanini, and Franz Liszt.

Cornel Wilde, a much-publicized new-comer to Hollywood, is very acceptable in the role of Chopin, and Paul Muni as the composer's lovable, bewhiskered piano teacher gives the picture that certain touch which sometimes means the difference between a mediocre and a first-rate production. In a performance perhaps worthy of award recognition, he changes rapidly from pathos to humor and frequently lifts the action to heights of emotional impact. snc