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EDITOR’S NOTE: Asheville Film Society offered a special screening of Ken Russell’s classic “Lisztomania” Oct. 15 at Carolina Cinemas in South Asheville. Scott Douglas is a member of the AFS.
By SCOTT DOUGLAS
Special to the Daily Planet
When “Lisztomania” was released in 1975, critical response ran the limited spectrum from cold to outright hostile, but it is a film overdue for re-evaluation.
Released a scant six months after the tremendous box office success and Oscar nominations of director Ken Russell’s previous collaboration with star Roger Daltrey, The Who’s “Tommy,” critics and audiences alike were thoroughly unprepared for what awaited them in theaters.
Those expecting a sequel to “Tommy” were destined for disappointment; instead, “Lisztomania” represents the next phase of Russell’s artistic evolution.
“Lisztomania,” though often historically accurate, never purported to be a strictly factual biography of composer Franz Liszt. A surrealistic examination of art, excess and the emotional cost of brilliance, “Lisztomania” delivers a cogent and often surprisingly touching explication of the psychological burden borne by that rarest of creatures, the creative genius.
The cult status garnered by “Lisztomania” 40 years since its release is well-deserved. To modern audiences not expecting another “Tommy,” the film is a remarkably unique and entertaining cinematic experience.
Critics blinded by the extravagance of Russell’s stylistic and narrative flourishes were oblivious to the film’s central thematic conceit, namely its depiction of the psychological ramifications of celebrity-driven excess on the creative soul.
The damage Liszt’s philandering does to his young family is evident, but Russell humanizes what could be an unlikeable character by unexpectedly referencing Charlie Chaplin.
A silent vignette depicts the degeneration of Liszt’s loving relationship with mistress Marie D’Agoult (Fiona Lewis), eventual author of the tell-all memoir loosely adapted in Russell’s script.
Watching this relationship strained to breaking by the birth of three children delivers emotional effect comparable to the best romantic melodrama without succumbing to saccharine tedium.
Russell’s Liszt could be fairly associated with many of Federico Fellini’s protagonists: despicable cads granted an arresting degree of pathos by a sympathetic director.
Reminiscent of the harem fantasy sequence in Fellini’s “8-½,” the closing scenes depict Liszt’s afterlife, in which his music and his women persist in harmonious cohabitation.
Russell’s indulgence in male wish-fulfillment, while overt, seems almost cloyingly sweet in contrast to Fellini’s darker and more misogynistic depths. Regardless, Russell’s films, like Fellini’s, are intended to be not merely seen, but felt.
Any film with a 10-foot phallus guillotined by a blatant negative Anima figure might never appeal to the broadest possible audience.
Similarly, Richard Wagner resurrected as a Hitlerian Frankenstein, murdering Jewish stereotypes with a machine-gun guitar, could raise a few eyebrows.
However, the emotional resonance of Liszt’s struggles to reconcile his creative genius with life’s most difficult tasks, finding love and meaning, make “Lisztomania” a picture that should be on every film-goer’s bucket list.
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