Lisztomania (1975)

Strong and Moving!

Best movie of this year hands down!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The film suffers from atrocious vulgarization in very bad style and taste throughout, which is a pity, because the idea is not bad at all. Liszt and Wagner are portrayed in gross caricature, which they were already while they were alive and kicking, and just like the 19th century caricatures even these modern ones do not miss their target and actually pinpoint some obvious truths about these the greatest divas among composers in monstrous vanity and atrocious hubris. Liszt was the more sympathetic and actually fell a prey and victim to the ruthlessness of Wagner ending up as a trophy in his graveyard, while the depicting of Wagner as a vampire and prelude to Hitler, his Frankenstein monster, is not altogether maladroit. In certain aspects it actually hits the nail. The unnecessary hooliganism of the film is the corruption of the music, which really is very little Liszt and Wagner but the more Rick Wakeman in horrible disfigurement in pop and rock versions. This is not a music film or any kind of biography or documentation of great composers but rather a twisted parasitic phantasmagoria tearing classical music apart and more or less destroying it. Ringo Starr as a pope with Liverpool accent doesn't make things any better. It isn't even funny but only stupid and disgusting. although a few laughs must out. Still, because of the idea, the imagination, the great camera work and the brilliant fireworks entertainment, I have to give it 5, which is the lowest I ever rated a film here, and I am very doubtful whether I will see any other of Ken Russell's films on music, no matter how much I appreciated his "Valentino".

After listening and reading the written record, I was slightly disappointed that screenplay writers failed to bring Liszt's passion for all classical music and the perfection that he so longed to achieve. Sure the groupies were all agog by the dashing young man that had them swooning and passing out when his surprising and powerful compositions reached a crescendo never heard before. And, yes, he did not pass up on an opportunity to jump on those bloomers when presented so seductively by those vixens. Liszt was my first celebrity crush before my family owned a television or I had viewed a motion picture. All I had to comfort me were classical LP vinyl records that were given to Momma from our landlady. I still adore his music and will always think of him as one of the greatest composers that really speak the words my heart and soul want to tell. The spoiler is that the screenplay writer made my rock star appear to be a whore and it spoiled the image of Liszt and knocked him completely off the pedestal I had placed him upon until I could find redeeming written fact. I say this the kindest way I can but the character and chastity of the women, especially the teenagers, of the class of society that would have had access to a Liszt performance, are portrayed quite accurately in the movie as being er, um, tramps, seductresses, temptress, and other politically correct adjectives of women of the time. This was my second "R" rated movie as an adult and, being as innocent as I was at the time (20), I was completely shocked in many ways from the way the promiscuity was accepted even encouraged behavior. Needless to say, it stirred some chit up within me, and the rest they say is history. My first "R" movie was FIVE EASY PIECES with Jack Nicholson that my mother brought me to see at age 18 so that I would be introduced to heterosexual activity behind closed doors. I was wrecked and horrified as Momma sat there watching so intently.

To many, this film is the stunning-proof that director Ken Russell never had it, and that idiocy and egotism were mistaken for genius. You could say mistaking idiocy and egotism for genius has been the appeal of rock music! Others might say that Russell is simply childish or immature, and that his films are the "masturbatory-fantasies" of an overgrown-adolescent. This belief is unfounded. Is this film over-indulgent? Yes it is, dear readers, very-much-so, because it is art, not entertainment. That-said, if you chuck any expectations, this is a funny film and allegory about the rise of pop-culture in the 19th Century. It draws parallels between Liszt's fame with the other generally-hollow spectacle known as "rock." This is great film-making, and it should be noted that it has similarities between itself and "Rocky Horror," and even "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," as they all examine and explore the relationships between sexuality and pop-culture in similar-areas. It really is true that women threw their underwear at Franz Liszt during his performances, and that he had many-many lovers--groupies.Lisztomania is an odd bridge-between "classic" rock and the emergent punk-movement of the time. The film can also be seen as a statement that "rock" is not really subversive or rebellious at-all, but ultimately arch-conservative, and repressive. Amen. It's just a hilarious, wild-romp that will make your guests extremely nervous, which films should do. Movies should challenge people to think and reflect--at-least occasionally. Ironically (or maybe-not!), Mr. Russell had contracted Malcolm MacLaren and Vivienne Westwood to design the S&M-costumes for his film, "Mahler." It should also-be-noted that "Liszt-o-Mania" was released exactly the same year that MacLaren's shop "SEX" opened on King's Row, the rest is as they say, is history. It couldn't be more camp, it has Little Nell in it.Basically-put, this is about the the ins-and-outs of "why" we want and need pop-culture, and WHAT we generally-want from our "pop-idols" (sex, of-course). One could easily-say this film criticizes the absurd spectacle that rock had become by 1975, and we get this quite-often in the film. But this theme goes much-deeper, into the relationship-between artist and patron (once, just the aristocracy, now the mob is added). The sexuality is about mass-psychology, too, so Wilhelm Reich gets-his-due, and there is a plethora of Freudian-imagery. It is certainly a very-personal film for Russell, and probably amuses him as much as it does myself that it enrages so-many critics, but it should be noted that some of the absurdity and excess came from the producer of the film, not Mr. Russell. Ken Rusell enrages all the right-people, and that's what some film-making should be.God love this lapsed-Catholic, and God love his ways. A flawed part of his canon, but very watchable and educational. As Russell began his career doing documentaries and impressionistic-films on composers for the BBC, it makes-sense that this is considered one of his most heretical-works. He complains about the opening country-song in his autobiography 'Altered States', and there were other aspects of the production he didn't want in the film. It's interesting to note that the 1980s was the period of his purest-work, due mainly to a three-picture-deal with Vestron. The 1970s were actually a very mixed-bag for him, as Lisztomania attests. He isn't entirely-pleased with it, but had some fun with the material, and there it is. I think it's a hoot, which means it isn't on DVD.

In Ken Russell's burlesque of Listz's life Franz is forever young, Felix Mendlessohn is never Wagner's friend, and Friedrich Nietzsche has been reduced to a hat! When we first catch sight of him, Wagner has come to one of Listz's piano recitals (in truth a rock concert) to ask the Master to play the overture to "Rienzi"; Liszt complies, yet keeps on interrupting the score with bits of "Chopsticks" when the audience (mostly 19th century groupies) grows bored. Wagner stalks off, dressed in a rediculous summer sailor suit, the Nietzsche German sailor's cap perched on his fuzzy head. And this is how it goes for Dick throughout the film; dressed as a Kronstad sailor from Eisenstein's "October 1917" he sneaks into Listz's Hungarian home to beg for money, then exhibits vampirism, afterwhich he seduces Franz's daughter Cosima. After Liszt beats Richard (looking more like the drawings of Wagner you see on CD covers) in a musical battle, the latter dies, only to rise from the grave as a FrankenHitler decked out as a Private in the German Wehrmacht. If Russell had waited a year, there would have been a good chance he would have punked out Wagner, giving the film the subtext of Classic Rock vs. the Sex Pistols. It might have worked.