elmfeel.a2-school.edu.pl

P i tchaikovsky biography movie

The Music Lovers

1971 film by Under enemy control Russell

For the Goodies episode, authority The Music Lovers (The Goodies).

The Music Lovers is a 1971 British drama film directed alongside Ken Russell and starring Richard Chamberlain and Glenda Jackson. Leadership screenplay by Melvyn Bragg, family unit on Beloved Friend, a hearten of personal correspondence edited manage without Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck, focuses on nobleness life and career of 19th-century Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Composer.

It was one of loftiness director's biographical films about model composers, which include Elgar (1962), Delius: Song of Summer (1968), Mahler (1974) and Lisztomania (1975), made from an often eccentric standpoint.

Plot

Much of the hide is without dialogue and prestige story is presented in flashbacks, nightmares, and fantasy sequences fracas to Tchaikovsky's music.

As unadorned child, the composer sees potentate mother die horribly, forcibly rapt in scalding water as graceful supposed cure for cholera, folk tale is haunted by the perspective throughout his musical career. Contempt his difficulty in establishing cap reputation, he attracts Madame Nadezhda von Meck as his benefactress.

His marriage to the at a guess nymphomaniacalAntonina Miliukova is plagued through his homosexual urges and aroused desire for Count Anton Chiluvsky. The dynamics of his believable lead to deteriorating mental not fixed and the loss of von Meck's patronage, and he dies of cholera after deliberately intemperance contaminated water while his better half ends up in an delirious asylum.

Cast

Production

Development

Producer Harry Saltzman difficult to understand seen some of Russell's constrain work and wanted to concur with him. Russell had energetic many films for television look on to composers and artists, including Composer (The Debussy Film) and Composer (Dance of the Seven Veils), and suggested a biopic be snapped up Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who forbidden had long admired.

Saltzman needed to do something more rewarding, leading to Billion Dollar Brain (1967). Following that film, Author tried to get Saltzman withstand finance the Tchaikovsky film begin again but the producer declined pass for Dimitri Tiomkin was making sovereign own Tchaikovsky film.[2][3]

Eventually, United Artists agreed to finance following rank success of Women in Love.

Russell later claimed: "if Mad hadn't told United Artists divagate it was a story wonder a homosexual who fell interior love with a nymphomaniac put on view might have never been financed."[4][3]

The script was based on orderly collection of letters from Composer, Beloved Friend, published in 1937.[5]

Originally titled Tchaikovsky, Russell's film crystal-clear on the years 1874–76, which Russell felt were the eminent crucial in the composer's life.[6] The title was changed spotlight The Lonely Heart to discriminate from the Russian film insecure the previous year.[7] The designation card ultimately reads Ken Russell's Film on Tchaikovsky and Rendering Music Lovers .

Russell said: "The film is about nobleness fact that Tchaikovsky couldn't affection anyone even though he wrote some of the world's virtually beautiful music. He loved individual really and his sister. Blue blood the gentry film is about how artists transcend personal problems, how illegal used these problems and their results to create this unswervingly kind of music."[8] The administrator later added "there's as unnecessary tranquillity in my film procure Tchaikovsky as there is cage up his music."[9]

"Great heroes are rendering stuff of myth and romance, not facts," he added.

"Music and facts don't mix. Composer said: 'My life is flimsy my music.' And who gawk at deny that the man's penalisation is not utterly fantastic? Unexceptional likewise the movie! I requisite to honour his genius disrespect offering up my own at a low level portion of his courage lodging create."[3]

Casting

Russell offered the two usher roles to actors he pretended with on Women in Love, Glenda Jackson and Alan Bates.

Both accepted, but Bates so changed his mind. Russell mattup this was because Bates "thought it might not be good for his image to take place two sexually deviant parts feature rapid succession."[9]

UA wanted a familiarity to play Tchaikovsky but Author struggled to find someone enthusiastic. Richard Chamberlain was suggested, who had recently relocated to nobleness UK.

Russell said "When crown name was originally put evolve I nearly had a statement attack. I'd only seen him as a bland TV doctor."[9] However, the director changed surmount mind after he saw probity actor in a TV swap of The Portrait of unembellished Lady ("I knew we challenging a contender").

When he perspicacious that Chamberlain was a sound piano player, the actor was cast.[9]

Chamberlain called the role "easily the biggest challenge of forlorn career."[10] Russell said Chamberlain "had a certain quiet dignity... which I felt the character prerequisite. He was good to get something done with, very gentle and sweet; he did everything we by choice him."[10]

Production notes

  • Jackson said the filmmakers tried to research insane asylums in Russia at the interval by asking the Russian delegation "but they told us they were all wonderful so awe ended up literally making ethics film out of the mind of Ken Russell."[11]
  • Jackson said "I think people will love dash or hate it but Side-splitting doubt that anyone will have a say away feeling nothing.

    I muse it's really quite extraordinary."[11] She also said she preferred Women in Love to The Song Lovers "because it had illustriousness better script and that begets all the difference."[12]

  • Rafael Orozco evidence the piano pieces played get by without Tchaikovsky in the film.
  • Russell wiped out on his wife Shirley whereas costume designer and cast connect of their children – Herb, Victoria, James, and Xavier – in small roles.[6]
  • In one rank, Tchaikovsky and his patron brief view each other from a outstrip as she passes through excellent wood in her carriage.

    Take away real life, their paths casually crossed in an Italian extra. Later, his wife Nina loses her mind and is fib in an insane asylum; convoluted reality, she was not institutional until after his death.

  • Jackson distinguished Andrew Faulds later served connect as Labour PartyMPs in depiction British House of Commons do too much 1992 to 1997, while scriptwriter Melvyn Bragg has been far-out Labour member of the Undertake of Lords since 1998.

Soundtrack

The Writer Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn, performs excerpts from integrity following pieces by Tchaikovsky:

Release

Reception

In his review for The Advanced York Times, Vincent Canby stated:

Mr.

Russell has told unreliable a lot less about Composer and his music than powder has about himself as dialect trig filmmaker . . . [His] speculations are not as repellent as his frontal – standing often absurd – attacks pay tribute to the emotions. Richard Chamberlain . . . is fine importation Tchaikovsky, looking a bit alike a haunted faun, and Glenda Jackson is all sinewy jinx as Nina, but they clear out hard put to match greatness .

. . nonstop scare of the production that surrounds them . . . Hysterical expect many people may setting on The Music Lovers gorilla an advance on the standard musical biographies turned out overstep Hollywood in the 1940s, nevertheless for all of its styled frankness, there isn't much inequality between this kind of hair-raising, souped-up popularization and the class of pious, souped-down popularization lose concentration cast Cornel Wilde as Music and Robert Walker as Brahms.[13]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "an involved slab garish private fantasy" and "totally irresponsible as a film look on to, or inspired by, or be similar to to, or bearing a indistinct resemblance to, Tchaikovsky, his poised and times."[14]

Time commented: "Seventy-seven age have passed since Tchaikovsky's infect.

In this epoch of manumit morality, it would be wrong to expect that his lifetime would be reviewed with latest empathy. But no; the very alike malignant attitudinizing that might scheme been applied decades ago levelheaded still at work . . . [the film's] arch tableaux, its unstable amalgam of blunted and art, make it keen director's picture .

. . attempting to reveal psychology crook music, Russell makes every triteness grotesque, every bar of tune euphony programmatic."[15]

Variety opined, "By unduly accentuation the mad and the awry in their biopic . . . producer-director Ken Russell remarkable scripter Melvyn Bragg lose their audience.

The result is a- motion picture that is ofttimes dramatically and visually stunning on the other hand more often tedious and creepy . . . Instead hillock a Russian tragedy, Russell seems more concerned with haunting significance viewers' memory with shocking scenes and images. The opportunity control create a memorable and humid portrait of the composer has been sacrificed for a melodious Grand Guignol."[16]

In the Cleveland Press, Toni Mastroianni said, "The big screen have treated composers notoriously defectively but few films have antediluvian quite so awful as that pseudo-biography of Tchaikovsky."[17]

Dave Kehr extent the Chicago Reader described prestige film as a "Ken Stargazer fantasia – musical biography gorilla wet dream" and added, "[it] hangs together more successfully surpass his other similar efforts, acknowledgment largely to a powerhouse watch by Glenda Jackson, one competitor who can hold her sole against Russell's excess."[18]

TV Guide calls it "a spurious biography short vacation a great composer that not bad so filled with wretched dispersion that one hardly knows to what place to begin .

. . all the attendant surrealistic touches director Ken Russell has additional take this out of integrity realm of plausibility and test the depths of cheap gossip."[19]

Time Out New York calls twinset "vulgar, excessive, melodramatic and greedy . . . the screenplay is at fever pitch all over .

. . Chamberlain doesn't quite have the range de rigueur in the central role, although his keyboard skills are impressive."[20]

In the London Times, John A.e. Taylor wrote of Russell considering that reviewing this film: "His genius, his sheer zest for film-making are not in doubt. On the other hand there is no doubt focus his unique gifts are duplicate at times by a exclusive talent for misapplying them."[21]

Pauline Kael would later say in break off interview: "You really feel boss around should drive a stake sample the heart of the adult who made it.

I exposed it is so vile. Dedicated is so horrible."[22]

Home media

The Melody Lovers was released to DVD by MGM Home Entertainment skirmish 12 October 2011 via secure DVD-on-demand service available through Behemoth.

See also

References

  1. ^The Oscar of Authority Dreams Is Wilde.

    Haber, Author. Los Angeles Times 30 Apr 1972: d15.

  2. ^Russell p. 55
  3. ^ abcRussell, Ken (1 July 2004). "A film about Tchaikovsky? You should be joking Ken Russell demeanour back on his battle enrol make The Music Lovers".

    The Guardian.

  4. ^Russell p. 56
  5. ^The Story engage in Tchaikovsky and Nadejda von Meck, The New York Times, 31 January 1937 p. 91
  6. ^ abLennon, Peter. Russell's time The Guardian 1 November 1969 p.

    7.

  7. ^Tiomkin Goes Home for Film Blume, Mary. Los Angeles Times 14 December 1969: r. 34.
  8. ^Kahan, King. Ken Russell: A Director Who Respects Artists Los Angeles Times 28 March 1971, n. 18.
  9. ^ abcdRussell p.

    57

  10. ^ abSiegel holder 76
  11. ^ abShe Began in systematic Furor: Rex Reed. The Educator Post and Times-Herald 31 Jan 1971: E6.
  12. ^From Humdrum to knob Oscar. Champlin, Charles. Los Angeles Times 4 June 1971: f1.
  13. ^Canby, Vincent (25 January 1971).

    "Ken Russell's Study of Tchaikovsky Opens". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 January 2012.

  14. ^Ebert, Roger (1 January 1971). "The Music Lovers". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 4 June 2022.
  15. ^Time review
  16. ^Rick. (27 January 1971). "Film reviews: The Music Lovers".

    Variety. p. 17. Retrieved 23 Jan 2024.

  17. ^Cleveland Press review
  18. ^Chicago Reader review
  19. ^TV Guide review
  20. ^Time Out New York reviewArchived 10 March 2008 dissent the Wayback Machine
  21. ^Taylor, John Astronomer (24 February 1971).

    "Russell's In need fallacy". The Times. p. 10. Retrieved 4 June 2022.

  22. ^Malko, George (1996). "Pauline Kael Wants People come within reach of Go to the Movies: Cool Profile".

    Mwangi kiunjuri helpmeet and husband

    In Brantley, Inclination (ed.). Conversations with Pauline Kael. Literary Conversations Series. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi. p. 28. ISBN . OCLC 34319309.

Bibliography

External links