A maligned and controversial 1975 movie by Ken Russell, much less discussed than Tommy, it feels like everybody tries to pretend it never existed and just sweep it under the carpet.

A rather ridiculous plot, over the top glam / kitsch imagery, phallic symbols everywhere... if Tommy was weird this one surely topped it. But it is precisely because it was so silly and over the top that it has its charm (some connection to the peak of Prog here perhaps? ). 

Liszt is presented as the "first rock superstar", with female audiences going nuts at his performances (which was historically true). Then the movie goes on to his sexual relations and the tricky friendship with Richard Wagner which turns into drama and rivalry due to Wagner embracing anti-semitism and nazional-socialism.

Ringo plays The Pope who forbids Liszt marriage with Princess Carolyn from Russia and Wakeman plays the weird character of a sort of Frankenstein Thor created by Wagner to eliminate the jews. Hilarious if you don't take things too seriously. All in all, seen in retrospect it feels liberating, something which could only be done in the 1st half of the 1970's, nowadays people seem to have lost that crazy and irreverent stance.

Wakeman's soundtrack was not very well received but in retrospect is not that bad, some re-interpretations of works by Liszt and Wagner with some Prog chops, nice Mellotron and Minimoog, but the ballads where Daltrey sings were really not very good, and for some reason Daltrey's singing was far from his capabilities at the time. Incidentally I don't know how much could Daltrey play piano but there are a few scenes where you see his hands on the piano and he does it quite well, it's not that typical filming where you see either the face of the guy or the hands but never the two together.

I don't know if the image censorship soft will allow seeing this pic but I try: Russell's imagery was certainly not subtle, Daltrey must have had fun filming these scenes 

Daltrey's piano jacket is as kitsch as you can desire

Ringo as The Pope

Rick Wakeman as the Frankenstein Thor

Might give it a try perhaps one boring Sunday afternoon

Don't expect a masterpiece and surely it's as 'out there' as it can be, but if only for the connections to the music we like and the 70's period it's worth watching it, and it has some interesting bits which are not so explicit, for example when Liszt (Daltrey) mentions to his daughter Cosima that he wouldn't mind meeting the devil and selling his soul in exchange for creating great music, and later he actually meets the devil in the form of the perverted Wagner (characterized as a vampire who steals his musical talent by sucking his blood) and his own daughter Cosima who kills him using voodoo (he then takes revenge from heaven). 

I saw Tommy film when it was released. You can imagine what a shock it was for 11 yrs old kid that I have not been able to sleep all night after the screening of the film in one of the brand new Belgrade's cinemas, and a few nights after I did not sleep well. Maybe that Western ban for children to watch all the movies weren't not so silly as we thought about it in Tito's Yugoslavia 
So when in the local cinema arrived Lisztomania, I was already a new born fan of Russell. After so many years, I meet the great director at Palić Film Festival in Serbia, not much before he passed away. Sadly, the great genius had no time to complete his project of making that supposed spectacular film about the life of the scientifist and innovator Nikola Tesla.
This is my favorite song from the soundtrack ( btw, this topic would be somewhere at Prog music lounges beacause the soundtrack is a progressive rock album ).

Both Daltrey and Wakeman at their heydays