Lisztomania

1975 musical

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A partially (at least) fictionalized account of the life of composer and piano stud Franz Liszt, covering his fiendship with Richard Wagner (who was apparently a vampire) and his efforts to fight Nazism while flying spaceships.

I've never been a fan of Ken Russell's films, including Tommy which seems like something I should like for a variety of reasons. However, this had been on my list of films I really wanted to see for a while, probably because I'd heard there are an extraneous amount of phallic symbols. And there is a ton of phallic imagery including a scene with a Russian princess during which he sports a 10-foot erection that women straddle and form a chorus line on. Part of my issue with Ken Russell (and I realize this might seem contradictory from what I've written about other movies) is that the guy struggled to hone it in. He's got an overflowing palette of ideas, but it all just feels messy, like a sloppy joe where somebody put so much meat on the buns that you can't keep it off your pants. And you know what the best thing about Ken Russell is? It's probably the same thing. For whatever reason, I've always thought his movies were a little boring despite the originality. Lisztomania was a real phenomenon during the composer's heyday with groupie frenzy and hysterics. This movie, since it's also full of frenzy, has the perfect name then. There are really so many ideas thrown on the screen during this movie with equal parts biopic, adventure, bawdy sex rompage, comedy, musical, history, and science fiction that I'm pretty sure it's impossible to be bored. Confused, yes. But bored? I don't think so. It's all too gloriously audacious and whimsically offensive to be boring. Things start off right with a sex glittery metronome and some nipple action. The first chapter we get in the life of Liszt has him sword fighting with a cuckolded husband. And of course, that's going to involve bad visual puns, a Tarzan yell, those phallic symbols galore, cartoonish sound effects, and hoe-down music, the latter because that's just the kind of thing you have to expect when watching a movie about the life of a 19th Century composer. It's the kind of wild start where you're thinking that there's no way the director can maintain that flavor for the duration of a feature-length film. But hold on to your powdered wig because things are just getting started. There's a lengthy concert sequence where Daltry, playing Liszt as rock god, dances on top of his piano in a way that would make Jerry Lee Lewis's testicles combust. Women in green bonnets with flamboyant fans, Wagner in a sailor costume. It's really tough to imagine that things didn't go down exactly like that in early-19th Century concert halls. Things then calm down with a look at Liszt's domestic life before erupting again with that encounter with the Russian chick and that aforementioned ten-foot cock, revolution, vampirism, Superman allusions, abbot-hood, meetings with the pope (Ringo Starr, naturally), exorcism, Satanic Jews, Nazi Frankensteins, mechanical Norse mythological beings, machine-gun guitars, and spaceships. Whew. The movie's fucking insane, but it's also such a unique brand of musical biopic that you just can't ignore it. One thing Russell absolutely nails is the set design. It's the sort of thing that can only be conceived and birthed in the mid-70's, and it's a style that clashes with the essence of the stuff 1800's in an almost breathtaking way. It feels slightly otherworldly, like something extraterrestrials trying their damnedest to reinterpret human beings after flipping through history of the world pop-up books and self-help sex manuals. It's too refined to be outsider art, but it still has that feel. It's all undeniably demented, but there's enough that resembles genius here and more than enough wild ideas to make it strangely lovable. It actually makes me want to give Tommy or Altered States another spin.