At yesterday’s 6pm screening of the 1970 Tchaikovsky bio movie “The Music Lovers” , part of a 9 movie retrospective the legendary British director Ken Russell, sitting mid-theatre, announces that this is the favorite of his movies.
It might be mine as well.
Better than the still to come, hyper-over drive “Tommy” and much better than the in way over his head Roger Daltry starring “Litzomania”, only “Women In Love” might be superior. Never on DVD, I hadn’t seen the mvie since I was 16 years old. It holds up very well.
“The Music Lovers” deals with the closeted homosexual Tchaikovsky’s deeply troubled personal life and how it effects him and the lover’s of music who surrounded him. Portrayed by the voluptuously gorgeous Richard Chamberlain -Dr. Kildare to you, in a major break out role. Chamberlain was himself deeply closeted at the time so there was an added layer of irony unknown to the viewer.
From the very first seen, a gorgeous extended Christmas in Moscow set to (I think, I don’t really know classical, though I recognized all the music) Symphony # 3, a joyful romp that ends with him in bed with his lover, a Count.
This is embryonic music videos, ripe as a peach, over the top, gorgeous beyond belief, image overload. if you have seen Tommy you probably know what I mean, though Russell is in much better control of his art form here
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Tchaikovsky, in a vain attempt to live a normal, marries a borderline prostitute (he doesn’t know it) and fails to relive his platonic relationship with his beloved sister (“Not all women will settle for a spiritual love” the Count sneers).
A rich dowager falls in love with Tchaikovsky’s music and becomes his patron till she discovers his orientation.
The woman, discovering his sexual orientation, cuts him off but it is too late. Tchaikovsky is a star and making a fortune conducting his music for the masses. He commits suicide by drinking cholera infected water.
The Music Lovers are
The Count
His wife
His sister
His patron
And the images his music evokes are seen through his eyes and through the music lovers eyes. Incidentally, no trick photography in Chamberlain’s piano playing.
It is all purple soapiness but the music and the images make it so much more. It is a musical in the truest sense of the world. As Tchaikovsky falls into suicidal depression, the music is his life, and when he is not happy, that marriage, he can not write. His wife ends up in a lunatic asylum, Tchaikovsky continues to write operas, symphonies, chamber music, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake Lake, Symphony # 4 (trust me, you know them all) till his death.
I am not a huge Russel fan but there have been movies that have just rocked me out. “The Boyfriend” -his homage to Busby Berkeley for one. And the two I mentioned previously for us. Everything Russel does is feverish to way Fellini or Zeffirelli are feverish, he can pitch it so over the top, again look at “Tommy”, it doesn’t work as anything but spectacle. In an odd coincidence, Tchaikovskywas considred a minor talent during parts of history and the critics have been fairly dastardly to Russell. Though I think time will find him considered a major visual if not narrative director.
Russell is a real Director, a true visionary, who set the language for musical videos, even more than Richard Lester, on the decade away MTV.