“The constructive editing of the fateful musical broadcast at the beginning of the film – visually traversing the ocean to an air-view of Berlin’s stately classical architecture before backtracking to the UFA-created skyline-backdrop and model-cityscape – is but one, early instance of how the musical and the emotional connect in The Final Chord to the thematic and visual. Music creates these connections, and that two figures unknown to each other on opposite sides of the ocean – a dying woman, disgraced mother, troubled husband, and talented symphony orchestra conductor – should find their subsequent destines intertwined – in terms of a dead husband, an abandoned child, and a selfish wife – suggests that everything one couldn’t believe in life can be made believable, and even fulfilled, by art. In other words: the very aim of aspirational melodrama.” Zekefilm