Lisztomania
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Lisztomania |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ken Russell |
| script | Ken Russell |
| production |
Roy Baird David Putnam |
| music | Rick Wakeman |
| camera | Peter Suschitzky |
| occupation | |
| |
Lisztomania is a movie released in 1975 directed by Ken Russell . The film deals with the life and work of the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811–1886) and in particular his relationship with Richard Wagner (1813–1883). However, the film is less biographically and historically correct, but shows the aspects of the main character in numerous exaggerated and metaphorical scenes.
On the one hand, the cast caused a stir and controversy. The leading role was played by rock musician Roger Daltrey ( The Who ), and other popular musicians were seen in supporting roles with Ringo Starr ( The Beatles ) as Pope and Rick Wakeman ( Yes , The Strawbs ). In addition, in the film - unlike in Ken Russell's previous composer portraits Tchaikovsky - Genie und Wahnsinn and Mahler - hardly any original pieces of music by the composers shown can be heard, but mostly adaptations of themes by keyboardist Wakeman. On the other hand, the film is controversial because of its numerous dream sequences, which deal in particular with sexuality and Wagner's influences on National Socialism . In Germany, the film was approved by the voluntary self-regulation of the film industry from the age of 18.
The title of the film itself refers to a term coined by Heinrich Heine for the extreme admiration of the composer and pianist by his audience. Heine had created this neologism in the winter of 1842 when Liszt's concerts in Berlin were sold out on 22 consecutive evenings . Similar terms were used before (e.g. tulip mania ) and after (e.g. Beatlemania ) for moods of extreme enthusiasm for his cause.
content
In the early 1840s, Franz Liszt ( Roger Daltrey ) was at the height of his career. He travels Europe as a respected concert pianist, is adored by his predominantly female audience, maintains intimate relationships with celebrities such as the dancer Lola Montez and is highly respected by other contemporary composers such as Johannes Brahms and Gioachino Rossini . In his private life he lives unmarried with the French writer Marie d'Agoult , with whom he has three children, including the eldest daughter Cosima ( Veronica Quilligan ).
His friends also include the young Richard Wagner ( Paul Nicholas ) obsessed with revolutionary ideas and very self-confident . Liszt, however, does not share his self-assessment as a genius and, at a concert, interprets the themes from Wagner's newly composed opera Rienzi rather parodistically, which pisses off Wagner.
Liszt goes on a concert tour to St. Petersburg to appear before the Russian tsar . He says goodbye to Cosima, who presents him with a voodoo doll with his face. On the trip he falls for the Ukrainian nobleman Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein ( Sara Kestelman ), whom he wants to marry from now on. To achieve this, the Pope ( Ringo Starr ) has to dissolve Carolyne's marriage, for which the lovers travel to Rome.
On the way, Liszt got caught up in the turmoil of the Hungarian Revolution and regretted not being able to contribute to the revolution with his compositions. Liszt is visited by Wagner and anesthetized with a sleeping pill; Wagner turns out to be a vampire who sucks the sleeping Liszt and expresses his plans to use his compositions to bring the German people to national unity and to instigate world domination. Wagner later made the acquaintance of Cosima and her husband Hans von Bülow ( Andrew Reilly ) and fell in love with them.
In the Vatican, Liszt took a liking to the composition of sacred music, which he then focused on. To this end, he renounces Carolyne after the wedding and retires to a monastery, where he socializes with Olga Janina ( Nell Campbell ), among others . Finally Liszt is alerted by the Pope that Wagner is the Antichrist and that Liszt has become the devil's father-in-law after his daughter's marriage to Wagner. Liszt is commissioned to exorcise Wagner , on the other hand his music would be banned by the Catholic Church.
Liszt penetrates Wagner's fortress, which is right next to a Jewish ghetto , and observes how Wagner indoctrinates a group of blond and blue-eyed children there into being the future master race . Liszt is admitted into the fortress despite warnings from Hans, who is employed there as a servant. Wagner demonstrates an artificial human being created by him ( Rick Wakeman ) in the form of the Germanic god Thor , who is brought to life through Wagner's music and his philosophy ( superhumanity , anti-Semitism ).
When Liszt finally revealed his commission to Wagner, a duel broke out between the two composers. Using a piano equipped with a flamethrower and the dance of death played on it, Liszt was able to kill Wagner, but was shortly afterwards drugged by Cosima. She then holds a funeral mass for Wagner, who is then brought to life by lightning and emerges from the grave in the form of an undead Adolf Hitler . The resurrected Wagner is armed with a mixture of an electric guitar and a machine gun and, together with Cosima and the indoctrinated youngsters, causes a massacre among the Jews in the ghetto, of which Hans is also a victim. Liszt is finally killed by Cosima by the voodoo doll.
In heaven Liszt is reunited with his former lover and Cosima appears there too, since Liszt saved her soul. When Liszt learns that the resurrected Wagner is still raging on earth and has laid Berlin in ruins, Liszt decides to put an end to his trade. With an externally to a bird of paradise style similar spacecraft he flew to Earth and kills Wagner with a laser beam, which is powered by the energy of his lovers. So in the end there will be peace on earth.
Dream sequences
At the beginning of the film in particular, several dream-like sequences can be seen that show different episodes or aspects of Liszt's life. Because of their sometimes offensive depictions, these scenes attracted a lot of attention. These scenes show in detail the following:
- The opening scene shows a love game between Liszt and Marie d'Agoult, in which he kisses her nipples to the beat of a metronome standing next to the bed . The act is interrupted by the return of Count d'Agoult, who then duels with his wife's lover with a sword. When the count is victorious, he locks his wife and Liszt in the lid of a concert grand piano , which is then placed on a railway line and run over by a locomotive. The scene turns out to be Liszt's nightmare.
- A longer sequence in the style of a silent film depicts the love affair between Marie and Liszt. This scene takes place in a snow-covered mountain hut and shows Liszt composing and Marie raising their children. The whole scene, which is underlaid with a song adaptation (Love's Dream) of Liebestraumes No. 3 , pays homage to the film Gold Rush by Charlie Chaplin .
- When meeting Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein , Liszt is drugged with incense and then has a nightmare. In this he plays the role of Orpheus in a lady's dress and is surrounded by his lovers, where Carolyne turns out to be a winged demon . During a song (Orpheus Song) he grows an oversized erect penis , which eventually falls under a guillotine operated by Carolyne .
With the appearance of Wagner as a vampire, the fantastic-absurd elements of the dream sequences become elementary parts of the plot. Nevertheless, the following representations should be emphasized here:
- The towers of Wagner's fortress are in the shape of steel helmets, and many of the mosaic windows show the shape of swastikas .
- The youngsters guided by Wagner wear superhero- style costumes - a reference to Wagner's theory of the superman . The stylized W symbol on the costumes could already be seen in the film Mahler on the steel helmet of Cosima Wagner ( Antonia Ellis ) portrayed in the dream sequence The Convert .
- In a dream sequence there is a monumental obelisk in the vault of Wagner's, which is worshiped by six naked women and at the top of which is the Rhine gold . The obelisk is attacked in front of the children by a naked man, recognizable as a Jew by a silver Star of David on his forehead , who kidnaps the women and finally climbs on the obelisk to steal the Rhine gold. The children flee in a panic.
- Wagner's death ceremony is optically held in the style of a rally of the NSDAP . During the ceremony Cosima intones the singing of the Rhine daughters from the opera Das Rheingold .
Others
- In order to gain access to Liszt's house during the Revolution, Wagner shoots a guard with a Colt 1860 Army revolver , which is an obvious anachronism.
- Another obvious anachronism is a scene at the beginning in which Liszt and Wagner meet the composers Johannes Brahms , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Gioachino Rossini , Hector Berlioz and Frédéric Chopin , as well as a man who introduces himself as Levi Strauss . This scene can be found around 1842, when Wagner had just composed Rienzi . At this point in time, Brahms would only have been 9 years old.
- Several cameo appearances can be seen in the film. So Oliver Reed to see just as servants of Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. In addition, during Liszt's concert Georgina Hale (as an actress ) and Izabella Telezynska (as a millionaire ) can be seen, who had important roles in the previous composer films by Ken Russell ( Mahler and Tchaikovsky ) as Alma Mahler-Werfel and Nadezhda Filaretowna von Meck .
reception
Hans C. Blumenberg reviewed the film for Die Zeit and summarized his point of view as follows:
"[...] with Russell, who with" Mahler "had succeeded in creating an artist portrait of bizarre precision, it was only a tiring addition of arbitrary cabaret numbers, which was hardly achieved through brisk anachronisms, pseudo-critical analogies and daring cast ideas (Ringo Starr as Pope) Gain persuasiveness. [...] In "Lisztomania" an immeasurably vain berserk gets drunk on the ruins of his talent, gets lost in an abundance of highly disparate ideas that only die in shrill monotony.
In the TV Spielfilm , the film was given a "thumbs up" rating and described as a "high-pitched, explosive masterpiece".
The Kiel contributions to film music research at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel dedicated a six-page article by Hans J. Wulff to the film , in which the following comments were made:
“The films break with the tradition of biographical storytelling and stage music and musical culture in a wild collage in which the most heterogeneous material is brought together. LISZTOMANIA is the most misunderstood of the Russell films, at the same time the most complex and to this day the most irritating. […] The fascination of LISZTOMANIA is the method. The whole of cultural history is made up of the material with which Russell designs his montage, regardless of whether it is set pieces from high or trivial culture. A - albeit highly controlled - mélange of cultural knowledge circles the themes of the film, gives them expression and vivid abundance. "
Soundtrack
The soundtrack for the film consists mainly of adaptations of Wagner and Liszt themes that were recorded by Rick Wakeman with various synthesizers . There are also several pieces with vocals, most of which are from Roger Daltrey , with one piece each by Linda Lewis and Wagner actor Paul Nicholas . The themes for adaptations are in particular the Liebestraum No. 3 and the Hungarian Rhapsodies by Franz Liszt as well as the prelude to the 3rd act, the so-called Walkürenritt , from the opera Die Walküre by Richard Wagner.
The soundtrack was released on LP in 1975 and is now generally received as a solo album by Wakeman in the style of progressive rock . The original LP had a playing time of 32:45 minutes and had the following composition of the titles:
- Rienzi / Chopsticks Fantasia - 4:20
- Love's Dream - 4:25
- Dante Period - 2:05
- Orpheus Song - 3:10
- Hell - 1:59
- Hibernation - 1:12
- Excelsior Song - 2:32
- Master Race - 0:45
- Rape, Pillage and Clap - 3:11
- Funerailles - 3:48
- Free Song (Hungarian Rhapsody) - 2:00
- Peace At Last - 2:59
Rick Wakeman was not happy with the compilation and released another version of the soundtrack in 2002. The album, released on CD under the title The Real Lisztomania , contains a few additional pieces, although some of the songs from the original album are again omitted. In addition, some spoken passages have been added that describe the approximate background of the following pieces.
The Real Lisztomania had a playing time of 46:23 minutes and included the following titles:
- The Scene - 0:35
- The Metronome - 0:58
- The Country Sword Dance - 4:05
- Free Song - 3:32
- The Freudian Dream - 0:40
- Dante Period - 2:32
- Orpheus Song - 4:05
- For The Chop - 2:34
- Hell - 1:58
- Wagner's Dream - 0:29
- The Dream Of Hell - 1:10
- The Inferno Ride - 0:52
- Master Race - 0:48
- The Ride Of Thor - 3:17
- Excelsior Song - 2:38
- The Guardian Virgins - 0:18
- Rape, Pillage And Clap - 3:25
- Love's Dream - 3:47
- The Suffering - 0:15
- Peace At Last - 3:53
- Love's Dream - 4:32
Individual evidence
- ^ Kolja Reichert in Tagesspiegel , July 14, 2011: The Liszt brand , accessed on September 6, 2011
- ↑ imfdb.org: Lisztomania , accessed on September 6, 2011
- ^ Hans C. Blumenberg in Die Zeit , June 4, 1976: Film Tips , accessed on September 6, 2011
- ↑ tvspielfilm.de: Lisztomania , accessed on September 6, 2011
- ↑ Hans J. Wulff in the Kiel Contributions to Filmmusikforschung , 1/2008, pp. 165 ff .: Lisztomania (PDF; 3.1 MB) , accessed on September 6, 2011
literature
Web links
- Lisztomania in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Reviews of Lisztomania on the baby blue pages
- Reviews of The Real Lisztomania on the Babyblauen Seiten