Tales of the Expected 2 – Tales of the Unexpected 1… Histoires Extraordinaires (1968)

When I was a teen I picked up a darkly-intriguing book about the influence of Edgar Allen Poe on film: Cinema of Mystery by Rose London*. It featured the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley and Arthur Rackham along with stills from numerous films that left their mark on my impressionable mind.
I was already familiar with the Hammer horrors but less so with Roger Corman and a whole host of others alongside a film that featured Jane Fonda, a horse and her brother Peter, in what looked like a fairly saucy tale of debauchery…

Years later I followed these images up by recording Histoires Extraordinaires (aka Spirits of the Dead) a selection of three Poe stories filmed by some of the leading European directors of the late 60’s. The Fonda story was Metzengerstein, directed by Jane’s then husband, Roger Vadim, followed by William Wilson (Louis Malle) and Toby Dammit (Federico Fellini).

Now I’ve finally watched it and the film that interested me then is not the film that interests me now.

Metzengerstein (Roger Vadim)

Kinky boots...

Metzengerstein, was made directly after Barbarella and appears to feature some of the same costumes! It certainly shares Vadim’s passion for showing off his beautiful wife as he makes Fonda wear a series of barely there dresses, sky-high, thigh boots and low-cut everything.. . It’s not done as well as their space pop-opera but there’s no denying that Jane could carry the looks off.

In spite of her apparent wealth Countess Federica insisted on sharing the bath...

She plays the young Countess Federica, who inherits the family fortune in her 22nd year and proceeds on a path of spiralling debauchery, ruling over her subjects with cruel disdaine and bending all to her will. We see one maid servant being turned towards this life and scene by scene her initial disgust is replaced by acceptance and then relish… very Vadim.

Federica’s 24 hour non-stop party people laugh at her dignified cousin Baron Wilhelm (Peter Fonda…see what they did there?) as he stays in his manor, minding his beloved horses. But after he saves her from a wolf trap on the estate she becomes entranced by his stillness. He’s a pure being amongst all the partied out detritus of her entourage.

When do I get the motorbike?

But he won’t bend to the Countess’ will and wants only to be left alone even though he seems to return her interest he will not meet her on anything other than equal terms. In anger she orders her servants to burn down his stables and his horses with it. But Wilhelm plunges into the flames and sacrifices his own life in trying to save his animals.

Federica realises that there's something familiar about Wilhelm

Federica is horrified and sees the black horse on her tapestry vanish in flames at the same time that a wild black stallion arrives. Only she can tame the horse and they begin to spend more and more time together as she abandons her wayward existence.

She orders the tapestry re-woven and, a sit takes shape, gradually realises who the horse is and what she has to do to atone for all her crimes. In the closing segment she rides headlong into a bush fire near her castle…riding to her death in the flames along with her lover.

Only Federica can tame the black horse

It’s a well-groomed tale but lacks real suspense especially as Jane F’s multiple costume changes don’t quite mask the static nature of the scenes in the castle. It feels a bit rushed in spite of some excellent camera work and the acting talent on show.

William Wilson (Louis Malle)
 

Alain Delon

William Wilson is less stylish but more straightforwardly unsettling.  Alain Delon stars as the titular Wilson and is at his detached best dispensing cruelty to all around him but still terrified by his nemesis, a man who shares not only his name but his face.

Wilson insists on seeing a priest to confess to having murdered a man, he needs to share a secret and in is not seeking forgiveness just validation. We see his cruelty emerging early on at school as he bullies his weaker classmates.

Only BB could smoke a cigar like this!

But then, one arrives who is more than his equal, even down to sharing the same name. He tries to kill his doppelgänger then but only succeeds in getting them both expelled. The story shifts forward to when he is a medical student who’s cruel tortures are again cut short by his other self.

Finally, Wilson, by now in the army, engages in a sado-masochistic game of cards with the Lady Giuseppina (strikingly played by Brigitte Bardot in raven-haired wig). Having cheated her he then proceeds to beat her, humiliating her in public in a gratuitous scene I could have done without. But, again, the other Wilson arrives to expose him as a cheat and save the lady.

Wilson is himself humiliated and his career is over. In a rage he flies at the other Wilson and finally succeeds in slaying him but, as one Wilson dies, he says to the other, that he cannot exist by himself… and so it proves.

Malle does very well with the card scene (apart from the violence) but, in spite of the leads’ excellence, they cannot elevate this section to “mysterious” it’s just “uncomfortable”, from the schoolyard torture, the attempted live dissection of a young blonde to the violence towards Giuseppina.

Toby Dammit ( Federico Fellini)

Totally cool Terence

Toby Dammit was (very) loosely based on Poe’s Never Bet the Devil Your Head and is not only the best of the three but bears comparison with some of Fellini’s best work. His first film following Juliet of the Spirits in 1965, it carries some of the displaced mysticism of that film whilst also pre-figuring the atmospheres of David Lynch: dislocated and disorientating.

A lot of this is down to cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, who captures an extraordinary consistency of light in the opening sequences in particular… it’s as if the airport was being bathed in Hellish glow and as Toby travels towards an icy cool television interview the streets reflect unsettling scene in the red light of his car window…

You have to assume that Toby is already in Hell as surely as he is already damned…

Fellini apparently asked for the most debauched actors in Britain and chose Terence Stamp ahead of Edward Fox, to play Dammit. And what a superb choice it was a Stamp agonises and twists his way through the roll… remembering that this was before the deaths of many key 60’s icons he looks set on a path of self-destruction - no one gets out of here alive.

Toby is promised a Ferrari and taken to the Italian Oscars, the “She Wolf Awards”. This is where the Lynch comparisons really kick in as various and sundry odd-balls give and receive awards. It’s surreal and unsettling echoing Toby’s inner state.

Antonia Pietrosi

He meets one sympathetic character, played by the amazing Antonia Pietrosi, who assures him that he is in safe hands and will be looked after… Is it the cocktail of drink and drugs or is this Old Nicola herself coming to claim his soul? Hard to know but whatever you want.

Toby gets up to deliver his guest speech but breaks down amidst the Shakespeare and runs off. Outside he encounters the Ferrari, his reward… he climbs in and speeds off through the bewildering foggy darkness…  Racing on with scant consideration for his own safety, he eventually skids to a halt near a fallen bridge.

"Old Nicola" doesn't always play ball...

He seems relieved at the narrow escape but then sees a young girl on the other side, the same one he had seen at the airport. She smiles at him and he knows he must try and cross over to meet her. Reversing the car he revs the engine and prepares to drive on to his destiny.

None of the other stories is as genuinely chilling as Fellini’s and it fits in enough imagery and ideas to fuel and entire film. All of this is as jarringly disconcerting as the best of Poe. The story may be further from EAP’s original but the spirit is there.

Terence Stamp plays a blinder and takes the best actor award for the triptych: it may have been close to his existence at the time but he plays the character as a man run out of ideas and time… betrayed by all of those around him including the little girl who finally claims his soul.

Dusty verdict: Buy the DVD – it’s worth it for Toby Dammit alone: Fellini on form.

*Rose London's Cinema of Mystery is still to be found on Amazon and elsewhere.

Nuns, in sunglasses

Echoes… The Stone Tape (1972)

The Stone Tape is a made for TV play broadcast as a Christmas ghost story in 1972. It was written by Nigel Kneale who specialised in macabre tales mixing the supernatural with the scientific most famously in Quatermass and a host of other plays.

Filmed largely in studio it still packs an uncanny punch to this day as it shows men pitting technology against ancient “evil”… attempting to control and to commercialise that which they barely comprehend. Directed with superb timing and economy by Peter Sasdy, it featured some of the leading British actors of the time all of whom act their collective socks off in service to Kneale’s excellent script… you really wouldn’t expect a studio play to be so affecting but it’s unsettling in spite and because of the location.

Jill, Brock and the boys...

Ace computer analyst, Jill Greeley (Jane Asher) arrives at Ryan Electronics' new research facility “Taskerlands”. It’s an old Victorian property about to be transformed into a research hot-house to help the electronics firm keep pace with the Japanese competition. As she pulls up two Ryan lorries apparently start reversing into Jill’s car… she reverses away in panic into a pile of sand: it’s a foretaste of the ordeal to come.

Peter Brock (Michael Bryant) is the head of a research team and he is a natural leader, decisive, aggressive and always with an eye for the main chance. He’s married with children (and a horse) but has been having an affair with his computer prodigy.

Iain Cuthbertson and Michael Bryant

There’s something very strange about their new base and foreman Roy Collinson (Iain Cuthbertson), reveals that the builders have refused to work on one room saying that it’s haunted. Naturally Brock dismisses this but Jill is shaken to the core as she sees an apparition of a woman in Victorian dress, screaming in terror…

The sightings continue until even Brock is convinced there’s something awry… boldly he decides that this is something worth investigating: “… a mass of data... waiting for a correct interpretation.” He marshals his team and they move their kit and computers into the room to analyse and nail the phenomenon.

They’re a mix of sceptics covering the full gamut of 70’s TV scientists from rough and ready (Peter Angelis) to bearded and contemplative (Michael Bates).  But, not only do they not believe some, literally, cannot see of hear the apparition… there are sensitives like Jill who perceive the sound and vision and others who cannot.

Jill sees the image of a terrified Victorian servant girl who is running away from what she describes as the “others”… she trips and falls to her death. Jill and Brock investigate and find that this reflects and actual event form the 1890s… There were even several attempts to exorcise the ground although the local vicar is too disorganised to find the records.

But some of the locals have also had experience of the house and one reveals a deeply scaring event in which his friend was left alone locked in the room… he lost his mind surrounded by what seem to be darker apparitions than the girl…

After failing to record the images and sounds of the “ghost” they attempt to record temperature changes as there is always a perceived drop when the manifestations occur… this fails again but the scientists plough on in an attempt to rationalise. This is intelligent scripting form Kneale, a story that could so easily drift into melodrama is kept taught and suspenseful as scientific method is applied.

All are driven on by Brock and his authoritarian leadership… a peculiarly British type of anti-hero in the post-war years when our scientific ingenuity generated world-leading engineering. Science was clearly the way forward but the costs were only beginning to be counted.

Brock decides that the event has been imprinted in the ancient stone of the room… the stone “tape”.  The group celebrates thinking it has found a potentially ground-breaking storage device that would generate 3D sound and vision – “the big one” …their fortunes secured.

In typical fashion Brock aims to exert control and to trigger the manifestation through sound. He drives his team to the brink of exhaustion in his increasingly desperate attempts and only succeeds in erasing the “tape” – blasting the residual energies creating the apparition from the stone.

This failure is swiftly followed by head office running out of patience and curtailing his funding and control in favour of a washing machine project run by Brock’s rival Crawshaw (Reginald Marsh). The game is up and in spite of Jill’s gnawing feeling that there’s more as she tries to unravel the computer analysis, Brock has to move on and dismantle the project.

Jane Asher

Spoilers ahead: As Crawshaw’s team arrives, the local vicar arrives confirming the story of exorcism, but it’s much earlier than the death of the maid… Now convinced that the maid was merely the latest in a long line of incidents, Jill enters the new data onto her computer model and discovers that the energies creating the phenomenon date back thousands of years and not just hundreds…

She returns to the room and is overcome by the full force of the others as the room seemingly connects with the ancient world…following in the footsteps of the maid she ascends the stairs and is overwhelmed. After her funeral Brock goes back to the room and to his horror now hears Jill’s voice screaming in terror, calling out to him for help…she has become imprinted in the stone.

The Stone Tape stands up very well and is rightly regarded as a classic of the era. Maybe that’s partly down to the imprints left on our televisual memory of the style and substance of dramas of the time… Kneale’s other ghost stories, Quatermass, Doctor Who. But even as retro-science-horror it works and yet the writing is sophisticated and the direction from Peter Sasdy is superb with the enclosed sets adding to the claustrophobic feeling: they knew how to use such limitations as a source of strength!

And the actors carry the story well with Bryant being superbly convincing as the careerist wiling to sacrifice almost all before his ambitions… he lets enough through to show he has a caring side and this sets us up for the shocking ending when, finally he becomes the haunted man.

Brock learns the truth...

Jane Asher is also superb, carrying the mystery with her for long portions of the film and being the sensitive human anchor amongst all the testosterone and scientific posturing… The men want to control but she wants to genuinely understand. Brock’s casual in-bred – “bloody women!” – rebounds emphatically on him in the end.

A genuinely moving and affecting story that stays with you for days afterwards, this has to be one of the strangest plays ever shown on mainstream British television. After even being reported lost at one stage, The Stone Tape has recently been re-released by the BFI complete with extras and commentary.

Dusty box rating: Ditch the VHS and buy the DVD

An ideal for love… Wonderwall (1968)

Jane Birkin is Penny Lane...

All these years later it would just be so easy to mock the pretentions of the psychedelic era but that would be too lazy and it would be to underestimate what some achieved. You have to try and view these things in the context of the time, respect their references and be sympathetic to their aims. After all, history makes fools of us all as we look back in hindsight and across subsequent cultural-references.

So it is that what I first heard of as an experimental soundtrack from George Harrison that inspired, in name only, a song (Noel Gallagher hadn’t even seen it… he just liked the title…), turned out to be a genuinely interesting movie…

Wonderwall is good – not great – and most of the substance comes from an excellent performance from Jack MacGowran along with the striking contemporary mis-en-scene from set designers The Fool  and cinematography of Harry Waxman, ably marshalled by first time director Joe Massot.

Jack MacGowran and Irene Handl

It also has Jane Birkin and a cameo from Irene Handl… two quintessential women of their time.

The story is a slight one and truly this is more of a mood piece than great drama.

MacGowran does his best Einstein impersonation (shades of The Fearless Vampire Killers…) as a professorial type so absorbed in his work that he needs to read notes to work out the steps from shutting up his lab to soaking his feet at home… He’s absent minded and he’s a professor…

Beginning to see the light...

His flat is decorated in pre-Raphaelite and gothic tones with images of kings and queens and fairy tale poems on the walls… most of this is hidden behind piles and piles of his papers. In a momentary anger he throws a book at his living room wall and it knocks his butterfly collection to the floor and, at the same time, opens a small hole in the wall…

As he sits back in his chair, a light is projected through onto the far wall and this reveals the silhouette of a dancing girl… he follows the light to its source and peers through to spy a lithe female figure posing in the room beyond. Transfixed, he stares at this beautiful vision and is shaken from his dull routine, instantly in love with what he sees.

Jane Birkin ...well red

The girl is gradually revealed to be a model, Penny Lane (see what they did there…), played by Jane Birkin. The Professor begins to switch his attention form his work to the new reality of the world beyond his wall… he picks out new holes and tries to follow as much as he can… This is an oddly platonic voyeurism… suggesting that spiritual enlightenment is more to the point than plain old lust.

And Birkin is perfectly suited to being that object of desire. Incredibly pretty, she has an obtuse alertness that is a match for the naive longings from the room next door.

The Professor is disturbed by his cleaner, Irene Handl, his mother and his work mates but he is onto something here and he knows he won’t find the answer in his books or anything he has known.

Iain Quarrier arrives in style...

A young man (Iain Quarrier) arrives in a green car… he’s hip, vaguely scouse-sounding and has a cardboard cut out of himself… he turns out to be Penny’s boyfriend. He’s accompanied by a photographer pal in what seems a reference to Blow Up (on the surface a similar period piece but a far superior film which also features Jane B.).

The professor watches Penny and her man cavorting and makes more and more holes in his wall, ripping down the tapestry and setting up a ledge from which to watch events more clearly.

Penny models the orange shades and blue lipstick look

He is entranced by Penny’s modelling as she poses in a variety of fab skirts, coloured make up and scuba gear. Penny’s flat (also created by The Fool), is a riot of colour and decked out in more modern iconography… Garbo, Harlow and Mae West are there along with the shots of Penny and the trappings of 1968 fab gear…

Penny begins to invade his dreams and he sees himself duelling with her beau with pen versus sword, lipstick versus cigarettes… it’s amusingly well-crafted if superficially deep. British psychedelia was always more prone to whimsy than its US counter-part but none-the-less creative. That said, you could find Haight-Ashbury in Notting Hill and Camden even if not so much in Carnaby Street and Kings Road.

There’s a party and the Professor gets a visit from Penny’s guy who wants to borrow some ice… the two talk and the young man starts to reveal his dissatisfaction with being tied down… The party is wild and quite shocking for the professor who sees Penny’s growing sadness and her man’s incipient cruelty.

"Heigh ho! Who is there? ...Please come say, how do?"

The dreams intensify and there’s a lovely sequence as Penny, dressed in a diaphanous, neo pagan dress walks up the green steps smiling beatifically over her shoulder: she looks beautiful and the human response of the viewer is to want to follow. We want that look from her as much as the Professor does. But it’s a look of serene compassionate love and not anchored in physical desire… (although, having said that… she is quite lovely).

Jane Birkin

In a series of cartoonish inter-titles the core plot directions are revealed: Penny is pregnant, her boyfriend is sleeping around (a lot) and … he’s about to leave her. Things are coming to a head and sensing this, the Professor climbs through his roof and finally into Penny’s apartment. She returns and he quickly hides away… he emerges to find that she has tried to gas herself and taken an overdose of sleeping pills… He turns of the gas, returns to his flat and calls for help:  he has saved her!

The closing scene sees him return to work basking in the glow of his heroism, a new man infused with confidence. Newspaper headlines reveal that Penny, having been given a second chance, Is intent on starting afresh – it’s a re-birth for both.

Penny Lane saved by Scientist... Mrs Harrison meets Dr Doolittle...

But as the professor peers into his microscope he spots Penny floating amongst the microbes and urging him onwards to more new discoveries… Is she a force of nature, his muse, his obsession or a mythical creature – mermaid.

Clearly any interpretation will do. Wonderwall is more about the potential and possibility of life change than a prescriptive description of cause and affect… It’s a wake up call to…simply wake up and do what you should be doing for the best.

Mermaid in Notting Hill

It’s deliberately vague but then anything more specific might indeed be unbearably pretentious…

Throughout George Harrison’s music underpins the action in suitably psychedelic style and features a good deal of Indian noodling as well as electronic sounds. The “love theme” for Penny is one of the more fully realised songs and works well. Not as good as Macca’s efforts on The Family Way perhaps but still interesting and, for this type of film at this particular time, you could do far worse than get a soundtrack from a Beatle!

Jack MacGowran

Jack MacGowran gives a suitably nuanced performance of humour and mad-cap earnestness.  You can understand why Polanski rates him so well. And, Jane B, getting more screen time than in most other films I seen her in, does exceptionally well not just as an actress but also as an ideal for love. That’s a tough ask even for the best actress.

Wonderwall is available on DVD from a variety of sources. The German edition from 2011 promises the best quality and for such a richly visual film it’s worth getting the best you can.

A great future behind us… Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (1969)

The passing of Neal Armstrong was a timely reminder for those of us who grew up in the 60s that the future is not what it was.

When Gerry Anderson was in his pomp, we were in a state of perpetual improvement: life was just going to get better and better. Technology seemed to make everything possible and…we were going to the stars. The Moon first, then Mars and then beyond… science fiction was close to fact and the race for space was going to help mankind put earthly conflicts to one side as looking back on our single insignificant planet of origin we finally realised that there was a greater destiny beyond our petty disputes.

Anderson’s puppet shows tracked the technological obsessions of the decade and got more and more confident as he progressed from Stingray to Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. In all three a global entity addressed world-wide issues whether private sector or quasi-governmental… There were global threats too, but these were just confirmation of our need to act in unity.

By the end of the decade as the Moon landing approached, Anderson was successful enough to finally be trusted with a human cast to accompany the breath-taking vehicles of Derek Meddings and co… These were the men who were making our imagined future happen now.

Journey to The Far Side of the Sun (Doppelgänger in the USA) was an attempt at 2001-style inter-spatial-commentary…a look at the inner human condition from the outer-reaches of space. When I first watched the film in the 1970s it left me disappointed because there were no *real* aliens and, whilst the story arc contained the same let down this time – too literal and thin a plot – there is more than enough to enjoy the film as a whole.

Like so many plots from the time, the film starts off with space administrators arguing over how to follow up the discovery of a planet beyond the Sun. The planet is in completely synchronised orbit with the Earth, same distance from the Sun, same vector and thrust… The director of EUROSEC, Jason Webb ( played with panache by Patrick Wymark) makes a passionate case to send a manned expedition but he struggles to convince the other World powers to fund it.

Ian Hendry and Patrick Wymark

A familiar story perhaps but it just feels a little mannered, as does the character of Dr John Kane (played by the excellent Ian Hendry … a year or two from being sorted out by Michael Caine in Get Carter) who is a scientist with doubts and dubious fitness to undertake this arduous exercise.

The breakthrough is achieved and with NASA’s help, a mission is prepared to be led by experienced astronaut Colonel Glenn Ross (Roy Thinnes, who gives a good performance as a man faced with his own destiny…literally).

Roy Thinnes

We go through the routines of training and preparation which gives Anderson the opportunity to show the futuristic craft that were his stock in trade. The scenes involving all of the craft are universally excellent as you’d expect, given a bigger budget than usual and his army of un-matched effects experts.

Lynn Loring

This is the best part of the film as the enterprise builds up momentum and we look forward to the surprise of just what is on our planetary double. It also provides Anderson with the chance to develop his human assets as well with details of space cowboy’s struggling marriage – partly undermined by his enforced infertility: the chance of irradiated sperm mutating was too high.
Lynn Loring – Thinnes actual wife – plays Sharon Ross and adds some uncharacteristic adult themes to Anderson’s film. Loring was featured in several nude scenes which were eventually cut, but she displays a very human sexuality in a series of contemporary almost there fashions…

Lynn Loring

He has a more sympathetic support from his colleague Lise Hartman, a EUROSEC official (Austrian actress Loni von Friedl) at the space centre… but it’s a sub-plot that’s never really taken anywhere.
The two men are pushed by Webb and it’s hard to see this as anything other than a per functionary attempt to create some tension. The story is pretty basic and might have made a decent hour-long episode of Thunderbirds but it feels a little stretched…

Eventually we have take off and the effects are genuinely special here, not quite a match for 2001 but still pretty good, founded in science-reality and not fantasy. The long trip in suspended animation ends as the space craft approaches the mysterious planet.

For some reason I didn’t catch, they crash land (all the more mysterious given the outcome…) and are rescued by a strange being in a metallic suite.

If you haven’t seen the film look away now…

The men are surprised to find their rescuer speaking perfect English and gradually it is revealed that they have landed on a world almost exactly like our own. Everyone they left behind has a counterpart here and all presume that they had turned the craft round and not completed their mission.

Roy Thinnes...  Mirror-World

It takes some time for the realisation to dawn that this is indeed another world and the exact reverse of Earth… a mirror in every respect with hearts on the right, clocks running counter and cars on the wrong side of the road.

Kane dies and Ross is left alone trying to convince the reverse Earth Jason Webb that he needs to be returned to his Earth and this will hopefully help his double to come home…

But, it is not to be and, for some spurious vaguely-scientific reason, the landing craft of this world won’t dock with the other Earth’s space ship and Ross crashes back down to another Earth.

Roy Thinnes

The film is grasping for some profound meaning here but it is a bit thin (sorry Roy…). Whilst getting tremendously excited about the need for and experience of space travel…it’s conclusion that there’s – actually – no place like home is disappointing. It doesn’t know what to do with itself…

That aside, the acting is sincere with Thinnes, Hendry and Wymark being especially impressive. It’s also great to see future UFO stalwarts Ed Bishop and George Sewell and, indeed, some of the kit from this film were reused in that series – a far more satisfying effort form Anderson and perhaps his best.

The great Ed Bishop

UFO was all about build up and action and never really resolved itself as a story… perhaps that was what Anderson did best. He certainly did it brilliantly!

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is now available on DVD and is well worth seeking out… but I think I’ll stick to my VHS copy... back to the future.

Lisztomania (1975)

Fiona Lewis and Roger Daltrey waiting for a train

Been a while since I braved the loft-archive, but last weekend I emerged with a very dusty off-tv recording of Ken Russell’s tribute to the soul and style of Franz Liszt.

Lisztomania was made in 1975 and came to my attention as a young teen still under the thrall of progressive rock (not that I was waiting to be saved by punk). The soundtrack was written by Rick Wakeman and I remember hearing him discussing the film on radio whilst some of the music was played.

I was especially impressed with his take on Liebestraum No. 3 and welcomed the introduction to this classical great… prog wasn’t entirely evil and genuinely helped open our minds to classical and other music outside the charts. The film sounded interesting but it was an 18 and my interest in cape-wearing synth players was on the wane so... I never got to see the film.

36 years on was it worth the wait or did I make the right call first time round?

Liszt naps with Little Nell (Nell Campbell)

Ken Russell was always a mixed bag of a director with a mix of cheese alongside genuinely original vision. Undoubtedly intellectual he often seemed to prick his own bubble with the outrageous and the unfathomable.

I was impressed with Women in Love, Mahler and even up to The Rainbow (a favourite DH Lawrence book anyway) but distressed by The Devils and unsettled in unfulfilling ways by Lair of the White Worm and other later works. I probably wasn’t understanding him clearly but the films seemed inconsistent in tone and almost slapdash collections of disparate imagery.

Lisztomania

Lisztomania was the film Russell made after Tommy and is, for me, a mixed bag. It has some great set pieces early on especially Liszt playing in front of hundreds of screaming teenagers who call out for Chopsticks. But by the end things have deteriorated  as demons rape nubiles, a gun-toating Wagner declares war half a century too early on Europe and Liszt returns from Heaven to exact musical revenge on the composer who inspired the Nazis.

Rock icons...

Maybe Russell deserves a lot of credit for interpreting Liszt’s life in such a way, there are many elements of truth in the story, Wagner was encouraged by the older composer and did end up marrying one of his daughters, Liszt did tour Europe under the patronage of a Russian countess and his love life was certainly complicated… just not this complicated!

Lisztomania did exist as a term at the time as the virtuoso defined the possibilities of the piano in stunning live performances across the continent.

Sara Kestelman

Russell uses a pop star to play the star and Roger Daltrey does a reasonable job. He is rather outclassed by Paul Nicholas as the demonic Wagner as Sara Kestelman as his Russian countess (I saw her at the Donmar Theatre earlier this year and she is still a fantastic actress).

Liszt, Wagner and Thor the God of Thunder

Rick Wakeman plays Thor the Thunder God (who pisses in the fire place) and Ringo Starr, in an obvious piece of typecasting, plays the Pope…

Pope Ringo

The story is heavy on sexual imagery, the Countess’ house has phallic pillars whilst Liszt has an hallucinated ten foot phallus chopped off as the metaphorical quid pro quo for being able to focus on his music thanks to her patronage as he took holy orders…

You keep on asking yourself is this necessary? Isn’t there another way?

Wagner-stein

So it goes until Wagner turns really bad and is annihilated by the virtuous tunes of Liszt and along with his lovers and daughter, the composer descends on war-torn Europe in a heavenly spaceship.

It definitely means something but it’s hedging its bets. Russell did brash and entertaining and my teenage self would have laughed like mad at this film. I’m glad I watched it but I just had the feeling he could have done it better… and that’s my over-riding reaction to many of Ken Russell’s films after this point.

Flying muses...

Crimes of Passion proved that he could still make good films and he is undoubtedly one of the leading British director's of the last half century.

Lisztomania is now available on DVD and is worth watching as entertainment. It might make more sense though if you know about Liszt, Wagner and the influence of classical music on nationalist thinking in the last century.