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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1970s
    Movies - 1970s Movies - L 3 Mins Read

    Lisztomania (1975)

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    Nineteenth-century composer, a spaceship, comedy zombie Hitler, Pope Ringo, and a giant penis: it must have sounded so good on paper . . .

    With The DevilsΒ (1971)Β and TommyΒ (1975), Ken Russell created a very powerful style that intimidated producers and divided the critics. However, he came a cropper with this ugly, migraine-inducing and mind-numbing bore.

    Hungarian composer Franz Liszt is here portrayed as a rock star, 1840-style, by Roger Daltrey of The Who.Β The shaggy-maned idol rips into his songs and the audience screams with excitement. Some ecstatic fans storm the stage, wanting simply to touch him. Some want to bear his child. One adoring woman announces she already has.

    Russell portrays Liszt as a debauched celebrity pandering to public appetites with performances that are beneath his talent, while also spending much of his private time bouncing from one woman’s bedroom to the next.

    lisztomania4

    Liszt’s sexual wanderings climax with a fantasy sequence during which Liszt grows a Godzilla-sized erection, which, at one point, several women straddle simultaneously. Perhaps Ken Russell misheard someone describing Liszt as Europe’s biggest pianist!

    On instructions from the Pope (Ringo Starr), Liszt is charged with luring his former colleague, Richard Wagner (Paul Nicholas), back to Christianity. This doesn’t go well, because Wagner has become an evil scientist preoccupied with bringing the Norse god Thor (Rick Wakeman, seriously!) to life – although Thor, for some reason, wears the costume associated with the version of the character appearing in Marvel Comics of the 1960s and 1970s.

    The film culminates in a spaceship attack by the ghost of Liszt on the zombie of Wagner, who is dressed as Adolf Hitler and rampaging around the city, killing Jews.

    lisztomania_004

    Sprinkled amid this nonsense are various scenes in which Daltrey, the lead singer of The Who and the star of Russell’s previous film, Tommy (released a few months earlier in 1975), sings original rock songs.

    The result is a wild, kaleidoscopic romp full of sexual symbolism, Carry On humour and Hammer horror send-ups – an epic of self-loathing, self-parody and self-destruction.

    Franz Liszt
    Roger DaltreyΒ 
    Princess Carolyn

    Sara Kestelman
    Richard Wagner

    Paul Nicholas
    Countess Marie d’Agoult

    Fiona LewisΒ 
    Cosima

    Veronica Quilligan
    Olga Janina

    Nell CampbellΒ 
    Hans Von Bulow

    Andrew Reilly
    The Pope

    Ringo Starr
    Count d’Agoult

    John JustinΒ 
    Lola Montez

    Anulka Dziubinska
    George Sand

    Imogen ClaireΒ 
    Thor

    Rick Wakeman
    Captain

    David English
    Daniel

    David Corti
    Blondine

    Lucy Willers
    Governess

    Felicity DevonshireΒ 
    Hector Berlioz

    Murray MelvinΒ 
    Strauss

    Andrew Faulds
    Rossini

    Ken ParryΒ 
    Frederic ChopinΒ 

    Ken Colley
    Felix Mendelsohn

    Otto Diamant

    Director
    Ken Russell

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