Tuesday (11/29) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Mark Swed remembers filmmaker Ken Russell, who died Sunday at the age of 84. “Russell was not only one of the most musical of all filmmakers, he was one of film’s great imaginers of music. No one made music films so infused with, so intoxicated by, music. Yes, he could be puerile. He portrayed Liszt as a sex-crazed rock star pursued by a giant penis. He showed Richard Strauss cavorting with Hitler so salaciously that the censorious Strauss estate has managed to get that particular television documentary pulled from circulation. The neurotic, erotic carryings on of his Mahler and Tchaikovsky don’t qualify as proper musicology. But Russell always started with the music—how it made him feel, how it took over his life. Music was, for him, the key to our inner lives. It gave us permission to fantasize, to dream, to be extravagant. That is what he showed. He said he made films to get pictures music created out of his mind. … ‘The Music Lovers’ starred Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky. Next came ‘Mahler,’ then Lisztomania,’ with Roger Daltrey as the composer. All were ahead of their times, particularly ‘The Music Lovers,’ which, in 1970, explored Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality at a time when that wasn’t an open topic.”
Posted December 1, 2011
