Lisztomania

I'm a great fan of Ken Russell's films. What I like most about them is the director's ability (and willingness) to totally immerse his productions into whatever mania happens to be the driving force behind its subject. The results are often excellent, occasionally poor. But never have I seen a film that was, at once, so incredibly visionary and God-awful as Lisztomania.

In most Russell films, fantasy takes on an important role in the dramatic narrative. In Lisztomania, the narrative is virtually jettisoned in favor of fantasy, and not to altogether admirable effect.

Still, any motion picture that can give us Richard Wagner portrayed as a Transylvanian vampire who gains musical inspiration by sucking the blood of Franz Liszt deserves points for imaginative hubris.

Ultimately, Lisztomania is less a film than a comic boot pastiche. Its humor is, by turns, dazzling and lead-footed. Compared to THE MUSIC LOVERS (another Russell bio-pic, this time about Tchaikovsky), Lisztomania is, for all it gleeful, lip-smacking gusto, a rather tired affair, largely because it's metaphors are so pedantic and literal-minded.

I should point out, however, that Wagner's third-act transformation (or should I say resurrection) into a machine gun-toting, Frankenstein-Hitler rock star (yes, you read correctly) is a genuinely

Franz Liszt (Roger Daltrey) is a hedonistic composer in old Europe. In real life, the Hungarian musician lived from 1811 to 1886. Richard Wagner is a music associate. Ringo Starr plays The Pope.

This is surrealistic biopic. It can be seen as a mess, self-indulgent, and undecipherable. It can also be seen as intriguing and challenging. I choose to see it as the later. It's definitively not safe. I prefer a mess more than an uninteresting bland biopic. As an actor, Daltrey is not that great but his rock star personality is undeniable. Ken Russell is throwing a lot into this. It's a lot and it runs a bit long. I wish it wraps up a little sooner. Wagner needs to have more scenes as the antagonist. I would also like a bigger better actor playing him. He doesn't have to be a real musician. All in all, this is at least interesting.

19th century castration fantasy--delineating the extravagance of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt's sex-saturated young life until his eventual death by the symbolic stabbing of a voodoo needle (a myriad of maladies in actual life)--done-up in the spirit of a naughty British schoolboy bored by his classical lessons and entertaining himself by looking up his music teacher's skirts. Writer-director Ken Russell's cartoon-strip nightmare begins promisingly, with a hilarious slapstick joust between Liszt and his lover's husband, the Count d'Agoult (it's a naked swashbuckler, like something from an inventive blue movie). But soon it becomes apparent that Russell's vision is going to be all a pastiche, from silent movies to "Frankenstein" to German Expressionism to bows of unassuming self-reverence. The surreality of Russell's concept doesn't even make sense in the mad forum he has created--there's a narrative thread, yet nothing hangs together--while the creative production design upstages most of the actors. *1/2 from ****

As a collector of Who memorabilia, I found this movie to be quite interesting and entertaining, what's more, if one pays attention they can see that this truly is the work of Ken Russell. Though it could also fit into the category of "soft porn" and is in no way to be taken as strict fact of Franz Liszt's life it is a great movie for those who like the bizarre (Who fan's will note cameo appearance by Townshend) If you like this movie, check out Ken Russell's Mahler, starring Robert Powell (Capt. Walker in Tommy) thank you

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".