Lisztomania (1975)
Country: GB
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1 103m
Director: Ken Russell
Cast: Roger Daltrey, Sara Kestelman, Paul Nicholas, Ringo Starr, Fiona Lewis
Synopsis:
A fantasia on the career of composer-pianist Franz Liszt, in which he progresses from pop idol to ascetic artist and finally makes his apotheosis in a spaceship powered by his former conquests.
Review:
After teetering about on the brink of crass vulgarity with his films on Tchaikovsky and Mahler, Russell now took the plunge into the rockpools of his own puerile hang-ups. The music itself, which he only ever succeeded in lampooning with his tawdry visualizations, is here swamped completely beneath the seventies pop synth of Rick Wakeman's arrangements, and the ideas come and go, taking precedence over any sort of coherent narrative, much less historicity: a bonneted horde of female fans cheers him into turning Wagner's Rienzi into a performance of chopsticks; a giant authorial phallus is guillotined by an orthodox Russian princess; Wagner is transformed into an oversized Hitler, machine-gunning Jews with his electric guitar. Russell's assault on tastes of all kinds is so comprehensive, one wonders there was anyone left to like his movie.
Country: GB
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1 103m
Director: Ken Russell
Cast: Roger Daltrey, Sara Kestelman, Paul Nicholas, Ringo Starr, Fiona Lewis
Synopsis:
A fantasia on the career of composer-pianist Franz Liszt, in which he progresses from pop idol to ascetic artist and finally makes his apotheosis in a spaceship powered by his former conquests.
Review:
After teetering about on the brink of crass vulgarity with his films on Tchaikovsky and Mahler, Russell now took the plunge into the rockpools of his own puerile hang-ups. The music itself, which he only ever succeeded in lampooning with his tawdry visualizations, is here swamped completely beneath the seventies pop synth of Rick Wakeman's arrangements, and the ideas come and go, taking precedence over any sort of coherent narrative, much less historicity: a bonneted horde of female fans cheers him into turning Wagner's Rienzi into a performance of chopsticks; a giant authorial phallus is guillotined by an orthodox Russian princess; Wagner is transformed into an oversized Hitler, machine-gunning Jews with his electric guitar. Russell's assault on tastes of all kinds is so comprehensive, one wonders there was anyone left to like his movie.
Country: GB
Technical: Technicolor/2.35:1 103m
Director: Ken Russell
Cast: Roger Daltrey, Sara Kestelman, Paul Nicholas, Ringo Starr, Fiona Lewis
Synopsis:
A fantasia on the career of composer-pianist Franz Liszt, in which he progresses from pop idol to ascetic artist and finally makes his apotheosis in a spaceship powered by his former conquests.
Review:
After teetering about on the brink of crass vulgarity with his films on Tchaikovsky and Mahler, Russell now took the plunge into the rockpools of his own puerile hang-ups. The music itself, which he only ever succeeded in lampooning with his tawdry visualizations, is here swamped completely beneath the seventies pop synth of Rick Wakeman's arrangements, and the ideas come and go, taking precedence over any sort of coherent narrative, much less historicity: a bonneted horde of female fans cheers him into turning Wagner's Rienzi into a performance of chopsticks; a giant authorial phallus is guillotined by an orthodox Russian princess; Wagner is transformed into an oversized Hitler, machine-gunning Jews with his electric guitar. Russell's assault on tastes of all kinds is so comprehensive, one wonders there was anyone left to like his movie.