hyped garbage

Don't Believe the Hype

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

A year ago, I decided to watch Ken Russell's Lisztomania with Dominika because we wanted to see a movie that was so incredibly bad and idiotic that it was funny. Lisztomania - which presents the life of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt as a farce - sometimes works on that level, but more often than not it's an embarrassment and a disgrace to filmmaking. The problem is not with the actors, but with the screenplay. One scene has Franz Liszt (played by the charismatic Richard Daltry from the Who) visiting a duchess and coming on the receiving porcelain bottoms breaking wind. Yes, you heard that right. Then the duchess has a bunch of women encourage the erection of Liszt's phallus to an unrealistic size so that it can be guillotined. In another scene, Richard Wagner armed with an electric guitar starts his own Nazi party with a bunch of loyal schools who throw grenades everywhere. I showed a youtube clip of Wagner telling these school girls, "I am his prophet. She is his handmaiden... Through her you will perform the ritual. Through me you will serve the superman. You will be the master race." The girls reply, "We will be the master race" as if they were in some distasteful production of an elementary school play. Then they all do the Nazi salute and walk off. When I showed this clip to my friend who lives in Saudi Arabia, her rejection was perfect: "wtf!" Then there is that unbelievable scene at the end where Liszt flies a space ship that fires laser beams to kill Wagner who now looks a lot like Hitler. The big mystery is that given how bad these scenes and others like them look on paper, what made Ken Russell think that "Lisztomania" was a film-able concept? I honestly have no idea.

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.

Probably the worst of Ken Russell's great composer biopics, but still wildly enjoyable. Throwing caution (and every other bit of sanity) to the wind, Russell concocts a real trip with this one. It's a most contemporary period film. Roger Daltry is Franz Liszt as pop star but he's not really acting...he's Roger Daltry. He's also pretty dull but Russell had the the good sense to fill the supporting cast with the likes of Paul Nicholas (late of TOMMY), sexy Fiona Lewis and the always welcome Ringo Starr (as the Pope). Russell doesn't so much direct a movie as he creates a pre-MTV video. It's all senseless, over-the-top fun. A big deficit, aside from the vapid Daltry is the film's unnecessary length...surely the REAL story of Liszt would require some length, but with a running time over 90 minutes, this particular LISZTOMANIA is about 30 minutes too long. Look fast for an Oliver Reed cameo.

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!