Lisztomania (1975)

What can be said about this bizarre film? Anyone expecting anything relating to Liszt or his music will be sadly disappointed. The structure is that of a bad dream or a stream of consciousness poem, yet I remain unconvinced that anything in it is truly poetic.Being by Russell, it is a series of images, some of them striking, others hyper sexualised, grotesque or merely baffling. I must admit it held my attention, even if the proliferation of bare breasts and phallic imagery is a bit much at times.The story, such as it is, revolves as much around Liszt's son-in-law Wagner as the man himself. Taking their cue from his alleged proto-Nazi sympathies, Wagner is depicted first as a costumed superman then as a machine-gun-toting Hitler.There are a few good in-jokes here and there. An early one is when Brahms is told by Liszt "you're p*ssed" (it helps to be British to get that one) and later when Rick Wakeman turns up dressed as Marvel comics' Thor "You look like you came out of a comic book".Oddly enough I felt the most dated part of this was exactly what was meant to make it seem the most contemporary in the mid 70s, namely the music. Horribly synth arrangements of the works of Liszt and Wagner, and worse still songs based, for instance, on Lieberstraum, with terrible lyrics even by the standards of the time. Badly sung, too, surprisingly by Daltry who struggled to stay in tune.

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 ****

Just read between the lines of his audio commentary to this calamity of a film. To be honest there aren't that many lines in the first place as Russell seems lost delivering an audio commentary on his own and without Mark Kermode to prompt him and keep him on track. There are long gaps in the commentary that are occasionally broken by dull observations from the director. This is not a DVD review but Russell's commentary does reveal a great deal about the huge flaws in this film and the director who seemed so obsessed with shocking his audience probably comes as close as he ever did to apologising for taking things too far even by his own extreme standards. Some of his comments can be easily re-interpreted: Russell: 'Raising money on classical subjects is not the easiest profession so I'm taking a holiday from that.' Actual meaning: 'No one will allow me to make another feature film on the life of a composer after the monumental disaster of Lisztomania.'Russell: 'To really appreciate the film you'd have to know quite a bit about the reality behind Liszt.' Actual meaning: 'If you knew nothing about Liszt before seeing the film then you'll be none the wiser afterwards.'Russell: 'Maybe it wasn't as successful as I'd have hoped it would be.'Actual meaning: 'It was a catastrophe that ruined my career.'Russell: 'In drawing the facts together I've probably annoyed the Wagner family more than I might have.' Actual meaning: 'I deeply offended and insulted the Wagner family for showing the following: 1) Wagner as a vampire who sucked blood from Liszt's neck 2) Wagner as a mad Frankenstein-like scientist who used his music to create a monster in his laboratory that would turn Germany into a great country3) Hitler as another monster that was created out of Wagner's body. Russell: 'I raised the odd eyebrow as I saw it.' Actual meaning: 'This film is totally over the top and I'm embarrassed by it.'Russell even stops his commentary nearly 6 minutes before the end of the film as though he couldn't bear it any longer and wanted to get out of the studio as quickly as possible. I don't blame him.I saw Lisztomania out of curiosity as it had been denounced as the most extreme of Russell's films so I shouldn't have been too surprised by what I saw but there really is nothing to recommend this film apart from Paul Nicholas who is actually quite good as Wagner.The film critic Alexander Walker likened Russell's The Devils (which incidentally is a much better film and nowhere near as over the top when you consider the subject matter) to the masturbatory fantasies of a Roman Catholic boyhood. Lisztomania seems like the masturbatory fantasies of the director himself. There's really no pleasure to be had in watching someone as talented as Russell undoubtedly was taking his career and flushing it down the toilet. Give it a miss.

This film is brilliant! Casting Roger Daltry (a rock star of his day) as Franz Liszt (a rock star of HIS day) was a master stroke (though Russell seemed to always like working with the same people again and again and he had done Tommy with Daltry). Ringo star in a cameo as the Pope was a crack-up and Wagner as a vampire stealing themes from Liszt was a trip as well. There is a wonderful "silent movie" section with Daltry doing a Chaplinesque sequence which covers several years in Switzerland and incredible sequences of him as a performer dazzling teeny-bopper girls in crinolines and bonnets--all screaming and swooning to whatever he plays. The piece-de-resistance is the sequence at the end with Liszt in a rocket ship "powered" by several former loves swooping down to destroy a Naziesque Wagnerian Frankenstein Monster who is laying waste to the world with an electric guitar/tommy-gun. This film is so over-the-top I had to have a copy for my collection!