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Richard Chamberlain, Glenda Jackson, Max Adrian, Christopher Gable, Isabella Telezynska ... see more see more... , Kenneth Colley , Ben Aris , Graham Armitage , Alain Dubreuil , Andrew Faulds , Alexei Jawdokimov , Sabina Maydelle , Georgina Parkinson , Maureen Pryor , Alexander Russell , James Russell , Peter White , Imogen Claire , Bruce Robinson , Victoria Russell , Maggie Maxwell , Xavier Russell , Ernest Bale , Xavier , Joanne Brown

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is given the Ken Russell treatment in The Music Lovers, which means that there is plenty of music, plenty of passion, plenty of debauchery, and plenty of excess. Tame by Russe... read more read more...ll's later standards (Lisztomania), The Music Lovers nevertheless thrives on creative and sexual anguish. Richard Chamberlain plays Tchaikovsky with a bug-eyed intensity as a composer consumed by his art -- so consumed that his romantic attachments become bisexual and irrational. He falls in love with Nina (Glenda Jackson), the hysterical trollop he marries with dire consequences. As he explodes emotionally, his public performance of Piano Concerto in B flat minor becomes a cue for flashbacks to a series of discomforting childhood events that suggest incestuous relations with his sister. Back in real time, Tchaikovsky has to deal with Nina's outbursts while juggling his homosexual urges and his almost hidden desire for Count Anton Chiluvsky (Christopher Gable). The film also details the curious relationship between Tchaikovsky and his rich patroness, the middle-aged widow Madame Nadedja von Meck (Isabella Telezynska), who loves Tchaikovsky deeply, but refuses to meet him -- their only communication being through letters, even though he lives on her estate. Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's music. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

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71% liked it

831 ratings

Critics

67% liked it

9 critics

R, 2 hr. 2 min.

Directed by: Ken Russell

Release Date: January 1, 1971

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Flixster Reviews (54)

  • harrycaul
    December 8, 2011
    harrycaul
    Two quotes, two different films from 1971, the same critic: Alexander Walker, late of the London Evening Standard. 1) "I think it's a great film; I think it's one of the most important films ever made in this country." 2) "It looked like the masturbation fantasie... read mores of a Roman Catholic boyhood." The films in question? Respectively, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Ken Russell's The Devils. Now, as far as the quotes go, I completely disagree with the first and broadly concur with the second, with the proviso that "masturbation fantasies" need not inherently be devoid of artistic merit, as Walker implies. What on Earth has this to do with The Music Lovers? Don't worry, I'm getting to it...

    What I believe these quotes demonstrate very well is the critical snobbery and hypocrisy which dogged Ken Russell throughout his career. If you watch Dance of the Seven Veils, the biopic of Richard Strauss which brought Russell's dazzling tenure at the BBC to a controversial close in 1970, you will not fail to notice a reference to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. What I would argue is that, with A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick returned the compliment. With its army of grotesques, its leering, hallucinatory camerawork, the overarching campness of the whole production and - most tellingly - with its ultraviolence set to classical music, A Clockwork Orange resembles nothing so much as Ken Russell-lite. I simply cannot believe that Russell's work had no direct influence on Kubrick's movie - I will even stick my neck out and say that Russell in his prime would have made a better fist of it - so for Alexander Walker to dismiss Russell's oeuvre as garbage and embrace its progeny as a masterpiece is film criticism at its most maddeningly disingenuous.

    While The Music Lovers, Russell's biography of Tchaikovsky, certainly does not represent this director at the height of his powers, it's nowhere near as terrible as the detractors would have you believe. The film contains flashes of brilliance, some stunning visual coups and, amidst all the vulgarity and excess, one or two lovely quiet moments. My favourite scene is probably the one in which Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain), his wife Nina (Glenda Jackson) and his jilted lover, the Count Chiluvsky (Christopher Gable), watch a performance of Swan Lake and the Count wistfully summarises the plot of the ballet for the benefit of his oblivious rival. For the best of Russell on the big screen, check out Women in Love, The Devils, The Boy Friend, Savage Messiah and Mahler. God Bless you, Ken, for dragging British cinema out of the Kitchen Sink.
  • jjnxn
    March 29, 2011
    jjnxn
    Florid and excessive which is standard for Russell's films. The music of course is brilliant.

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Critic Reviews

Nicolas Rapold
April 30, 2012
Nicolas Rapold, Village Voice

Whole stretches of images seem pushed and pulled along before our eyes by projected desires and anxieties. Full Review

Roger Ebert
April 30, 2012
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Totally irresponsible as a film about, or inspired by, or parallel to, or bearing a vague resemblance to, Tchaikovsky, his life and times. It is not, however, a complete failure. Full Review

Dave Kehr
September 18, 2003
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

This Ken Russell fantasia-musical biography as wet dream-hangs together more successfully than his other similar efforts, thanks largely to a powerhouse performance by Glenda Jackson, one actress who ... Full Review

Philip Kemp
April 30, 2012
Philip Kemp, Total Film

It's unashamedly vulgar and, if you switch off critical filters, enormous fun. Full Review

Fernando F. Croce
April 30, 2012
Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

The picture all too readily settles for the prototype of Russell's anguished-artist aberrations, with the crassness of his formative BBC biopics magnified into gargantuan flailing. Full Review

Ken Hanke
March 8, 2004
Ken Hanke, Mountain Xpress (Asheville, NC)

Russell did something with this biopic about a composer that no one had done to this degree (and rarely at all): He let the music shape and drive the film itself. Full Review

February 23, 2012
Variety

Click to read the article Full Review

Emanuel Levy
July 26, 2005
Emanuel Levy, EmanuelLevy.Com

No review available.

Daniel M. Kimmel
February 8, 2004
Daniel M. Kimmel, Worcester Telegram & Gazette

No review available.

September 18, 2003
Film4

Click to read the article Full Review

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