The Music Lovers [1970] (VHS) dir Ken Russell

Ken Russell's Film on Tchaikovsky and
The Music Lovers (1970)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066109/

THIS IS A FULL SCREEN VHS TRANSFER, THE QUALITY OF THE ORIGINAL HAD SOME MINOR DISTORTIONS.

I first saw this film at a theatre in Montreal 20 odd years ago; the loss of the Panavision screen ratio diminishes the impact of Russell's visual artistry and reduces significantly story coherence. What was evident to me on this viewing (my first since my first viewing) is that the real tragedy of this story is not that of Tchaikovsky but that of his wife, the unstable, exploited Nina. Glenda Jackson's performance as the abused, self-deluded and cruelly exploited 'wife'is phenomenal, and I found it significant that the final frame of the film is of her and not Chamberlain.


The Music Lovers is a 1970 British biographical film directed by Ken Russell. The screenplay by Melvyn Bragg, based on Beloved Friend, a collection of personal correspondence edited by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck, focuses on the life and career of 19th century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It was one of a series of films, including Elgar (1962), Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975), delineating the lives of classical composers the director made from an often idiosyncratic standpoint.


Richard Chamberlain ... Tchaikovsky
Glenda Jackson ... Nina (Antonina Milyukova)
Max Adrian ... Nicholas Rubinstein
Christopher Gable ... Count Anton Chiluvsky
Kenneth Colley ... Modeste Tchaikovsky
Izabella Telezynska ... Madame Nadedja von Meck
Maureen Pryor ... Nina's Mother
Sabina Maydelle ... Sasha Tchaikovsky
Andrew Faulds ... Davidov
Bruce Robinson ... Alexei
Ben Aris ... Young Lieutenant
Xavier Russell ... Koyola
Dennis Myers ... Von Meck, twin
John Myers ... Von Meck, twin
Joanne Brown ... Olga Bredska


Much of the film is without dialogue and the story is presented in flashbacks, nightmares, and fantasy sequences set to Tchaikovsky's music. As a child, the composer sees his mother die horribly, forcibly immersed in scalding water as a supposed cure for cholera, and is haunted by the scene throughout his musical career. Despite his difficulty in establishing his reputation, he attracts Madame Nadezhda von Meck as his patron. His marriage to the nymphomaniacal Antonina Miliukova is plagued by his homosexual urges and lustful desire for Count Anton Chiluvsky. The dynamics of his life lead to deteriorating mental health and the loss of von Meck's patronage, and he dies of cholera after deliberately drinking contaminated water.

"SCHERZO BURLESQUE"
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

"DANCE OF THE CLOWNS"
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

"PIANO CONCERTO IN B FLAT MINOR"
(slow movement)
Piano soloist: Raphael Orozco

"THE LETTER SONG"
from EUGENE ONEGIN
Vocalist: April Cantelo

"6th Symphony"
(excerpts)
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

"MANFRED SYMPHONY"
(excerpts)
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

"STRING QUARTET No. 3"
(adante)
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

"ROMEO AND JULIET"
(overture)
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

"MINIATURE MARCH"
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

"1812 OVERTURE"
Conducted by André Previn with The London Symphony Orchestra

In his review in the New York Times, Vincent Canby stated, "Mr. Russell has told us a lot less about Tchaikovsky and his music than he has about himself as a filmmaker . . . [His] speculations are not as offensive as his frontal — and often absurd — attacks on the emotions. Richard Chamberlain . . . is fine as Tchaikovsky, looking a bit like a haunted faun, and Glenda Jackson is all sinewy nerves as Nina, but they are hard put to match the . . . nonstop hysteria of the production that surrounds them . . . I expect many people may look on The Music Lovers as an advance on the classical musical biographies turned out by Hollywood in the 1940s, but for all of its so-called frankness, there isn't much difference between this kind of sensational, souped-up popularization and the sort of pious, souped-down popularization that cast Cornel Wilde as Chopin and Robert Walker as Brahms." [1]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "an involved and garish private fantasy" and "totally irresponsible as a film about, or inspired by, or parallel to, or bearing a vague resemblance to, Tchaikovsky, his life and times."

Time said, "Seventy-seven years have passed since Tchaikovsky's death. In this epoch of emancipated morality, it would be reasonable to expect that his life would be reviewed with fresh empathy. But no; the same malignant attitudinizing that might have been applied decades ago is still at work . . . [the film's] arch tableaux, its unstable amalgam of life and art, make it a director's picture . . . attempting to reveal psychology through music, Russell makes every character grotesque, every bar of music programmatic."

Variety opined, "By unduly emphasizing the mad and the perverse in their biopic . . . producer-director Ken Russell and scripter Melvyn Bragg lose their audience. The result is a motion picture that is frequently dramatically and visually stunning but more often tedious and grotesque . . . Instead of a Russian tragedy, Russell seems more concerned with haunting the viewers' memory with shocking scenes and images. The opportunity to create a memorable and fluid portrait of the composer has been sacrificed for a musical Grand Guignol."

In the Cleveland Press, Toni Mastroianni said, "The movies have treated composers notoriously badly but few films have been quite so awful as this pseudo-biography of Tchaikovsky."

Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader described the film as a "Ken Russell fantasia - musical biography as wet dream" and added, "[it] hangs together more successfully than his other similar efforts, thanks largely to a powerhouse performance by Glenda Jackson, one actress who can hold her own against Russell's excess."

TV Guide calls it "a spurious biography of a great composer that is so filled with wretched excesses that one hardly knows where to begin . . . all the attendant surrealistic touches director Ken Russell has added take this out of the realm of plausibility and into the depths of cheap gossip."

Time Out New York calls it "vulgar, excessive, melodramatic and self-indulgent . . . the drama is at fever pitch throughout . . . Chamberlain doesn't quite have the range required in the central role, though his keyboard skills are impressive."