Flaming Love, and Cholera

The11th Annual Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

The Music Lovers (1970)
Sunday October 22, 12:00pm, The Cinerama

"Gossip dies without a few facts to support it my friend. Tchaikovsky gives them plenty."

The fifth of seven vaguely biographical features based on the lives of prominent composers, The Music Lovers (1970) is director Ken Russell’s florid distortion of romantic Russian master, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Throughout his long career, a primary criticism of Russell’s work has been that the garish, excessive and vulgar in-your-face style of this former television director is merely amplified on the big screen. Casting one of televisions biggest stars in the title role, production values which have become decidedly dated, and the frequent use of dizzying camera movement do little to contradict this observation. Still, Russell’s typically over-the-top portrayal of an artist who struggles with childhood trauma, a difficult (but very unconvincing) temperament and sexual frustration, does have several breathtaking visual moments: The incredible bonfire scene, dancing with the swans, and Nina (Glenda Jackson) ravaged through an iron grate by lunatic asylum inmates. The beautiful score is of course, Tchaikovsky.