Lisztomania

A spiritual follow up to Tommy. This feels like it gets lost in the madness but with some great music plus beautiful costumes and production design

The first half has the right kind of wild, surreal energy (I like that from its first seconds the movie announces it has no interest in historical accuracy or good taste) but it becomes more labored and a bit boring in the second. At a certain point Russell's use of Nazi imagery seems less like a coherent thesis and more like an attempt to force meaning and commentary into this mess.

Director Ken Russell made some monumentally bad movies over the course of his career, but at the top of his dung heap of cinematic garbage, one movie sits alone – Lisztomania. The film features Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt, the 19th century Hungarian composer. There really is no plot to speak of as the movie is more a series of set pieces that may or may not be related to anything Liszt actually did during his life. It is filled with bad writing, bad acting, bad sets, annoying editing and enough phallic symbols to make you think it was thrown together by a horny 12-year-old schoolboy. There are a lot of movies out there that are entertainingly bad. Lizstomania isn't one of them. It is irritatingly bad and makes you wonder what the point of it all was. And that's the rub – there is no point.

The first half has the right kind of wild, surreal energy (I like that from its first seconds the movie announces it has no interest in historical accuracy or good taste) but it becomes more labored and a bit boring in the second. At a certain point Russell's use of Nazi imagery seems less like a coherent thesis and more like an attempt to force meaning and commentary into this mess.

During it's initial theatrical release, I saw this film with a friend. In the middle of the movie, he ran out of the theater, screaming "what am I doing with my life?" Looking forward to seeing the second half.

As a fan of Ken Russell's previous outing, Tommy, I was looking forward to this one. Unfortunately, whereas Tommy has some semblance of coherence, Lisztomania is just a mess. I thought Roger Daltrey gave a good performance in Tommy, but if you think about it, he spent most of that movie as a blind deaf mute. Here he actually has to say lines. Roger Daltrey is no actor.

Some parts were funny but just too much over the top to the point of absurdity, and no in a good way. Roger Daltry was just wrong for the role. All too camp 70s. Ken Russell's Mahler was much better.

Self-indulgent and bizarre. Un-entertaining, gratuitous and chaotic. A waste of money and your time.

If plaster asses farting choking smoke in Russia and giant plastic-looking penises aren't enough, this film gives you Ringo Starr as the pope! Age-wise I missed the heyday of The Who, but knew who Roger Daltrey was/is, and found Tommy intriguing, so I thought I'd give this film a try. Ugh. I see why this one is pretty much forgotten. Spastic, vulgar, and very not historically accurate, I spent this entire film trying to figure out just what the point was. By the emergence of the vampiric Wagner/Hitler character, I was done. Give this one a miss.

Has to be seen to believed. After Tommy, studios gave Russell a ton ton of money to work with. They soon regretted their decision. Any movie the has Paul Nicholas as Frankenstein Hitler/Richard Wagner, Rick Wakeman as a Viking dressed as Thor and Ringo Starr as the pope is a must see. I didn't even mention the maypole dance or Little Nell.