Bolet provided the piano soundtrack for the 1960 biopic, "Song Without End," which starred Dirk Bogarde as the legendary 19th-century piano virtuoso, Franz Liszt. (The film won the Academy Award for Best Music score.) However, Bolet's playing was condemned by American music critics for decades as being too focused on romantic virtuosity, so his recordings in the 1960s were confined to fairly small and hard-to-find labels. Only in 1974 did he come to national prominence, with a stupendous recital in that year at Carnegie Hall, which sealed his reputation.