THE MOVIES OF MY LIFE PHASE ONE: Lisztomania (1975)

As you may have gathered from some of the essays here at the Domicile (especially the ones that praise the work of Phillipe Mora), I have a weakness for directors who are a little on the flamboyant side.  We don’t have as many as we used to these days, but in the 70‘s and 80‘s there were a couple of greats....and none was greater than the one and only Ken Russell.

Yes.  Roger Daltry is riding a giant phallus worshipped by women...

Ken Russell was one of those directors whose vision was so out there that I sometimes wondered if he was legitimately insane.  The best of his films are unlike anything you would expect from it’s subject matter--and this film is typical of that.  It’s obstensively about Franz Liszt, drawing parallels between his life and that of Roger Daltrey, the modern rock star that’s playing him...but it evolves into this story where Lizst is fighting against a Frankensteinian Richard Wagner, complete with Nazi uniform and guitar that spits out bullets, with a plane that is powered by the voices of the five female leads and shaped like a pipe organ.  When you view a Ken Russell film, you are entering another dimension....and unlike Rod Serling’s (or Jordan Peele’s) dimension, there’s no moral message for you to glean at the end of it.

That’s not to say that Lisztomania is without meaning.  There is a point Russell is making about how music in itself is neutral; we see Liszt taking Wagner’s work and turning it into a piece of fluff in the first act, only for Wagner himself to turn it into a call to arms for the Aryan Race towards the end of the second.  But this thesis is submerged under the bizarre choices Russell (who apparently genuinely loved classical music judging from how often he returned to the subject in his career) makes in both casting and visual design.  I mean....Ringo Starr plays The Frickin’ Pope!

Daltrey is okay as Liszt, I guess.  He doesn’t bring a lot of gravitas or nuance to the table, but I don’t think Russell intended him to.  I really liked Fiona Lewis playing Liszt’s first wife Maria, but to be fair I kinda crushed on her since I saw her as the weirdly film noirish mad doctor in Strange Behavior.  I was so...overwhelmed by the visuals and strangeness that supposedly there are small roles by Aubrey Morris, Nell Campbell and Oliver f’in Reed that I didn’t recognize...and I love those guys.

I really adore Ken Russell; one of the results of watching this was making me want to watch/revisit more of his work.  But I will admit that it’s not for everybody, and he falls flat on his face as much as he succeeds.  Russell is an acquired taste, and it may be a taste you won’t be able to stomach.  I recommend this, although I ask you to use discretion.

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