THE MUSIC LOVERS Movie Review

Ken Russell hit the skids relatively early in his career with a film that made his The Devils (also made in 1971) look like a 1950s educational filmstrip. The Music Lovers purports to contrast Tchaikovsky's musical achievements with his tormented private life—but do we have to be tormented too? The gay Tchaikovsky marries out of convenience, only to discover to his horror that his blushing bride (Glenda Jackson) is a nymphomaniac. The film includes a metaphorical fellatio scene involving Tchaikovsky, his boyfriend, and a peach, and Mrs. Tchaikovsky ends up in an asylum, sitting on an open grating with men reaching up underneath it to touch her while she moans her approval. (There's a great symmetry in this shot: Jackson the actress reaches bottom while her character's bottom is being reached. Thanks, Ken.) The Music Lovers is the worst musical biography ever made—even worse than Russell's own Lisztomania. It's the film that Ed Wood would have killed to make, if only he'd had the budget, the clout and even less talent. (Melvyn Bragg—who hosts the splendid South Bank Show on the BBC and Bravo—was the screenwriter.)

NEXT STOP … Lisztomania, Mahler, The Gene Krupa Story

1971 (R) 122m/C GB Richard Chamberlain, Glenda Jackson, Max Adrian, Christopher Gable, Kenneth Colley, Izabella Telezynska, Maureen Pryor; D: Ken Russell; W: Melvin Bragg; C: Douglas Slocombe; M: Andre Previn. VHS, LV, Letterbox MGM, MLB, FCT