A gift for hyperbole has been noted in Ken Russell's work before now, and it is argued both fulsomely and aptly to his remarkable film about Tchaikovsky [The Music Lovers]. Since much of this composer's work has been construed as a romantic compensation for the personal torments of his life, Russell's method is justified. Passages of great beauty are contrasted with a pronounced ugliness, as for example in Tchaikovsky's memory of the hot bath given his mother in a futile attempt to save her from death by cholera. This has its dramatically valid purpose, of course, because the same treatment was used without success when the son died of the same disease: therefore we get a double dose of grotesquerie…. Such incidents, to which Russell's film is rather prone, are not only pertinent to the hypersensitive state of mind he is depicting—they are also brilliantly cinematic. Yet, for my own taste, I find them in the long run too much. It would be unfair not to acknowledge their viability in a work that affords us an impression of the artist's psyche, as distinct from a mere documentation of the known facts about his life and work; nevertheless they have a tendency to outweigh the heady splendours of the passages which are superbly aligned with the music itself, the calculated flights of romanticism that echo visually the melodic graces and raptures of the composer's wishful imagination. (p. 47)
Rather an excess of footage … has been granted to [Nina,] the woman he married, and lived with for a short time…. Tchaikovsky's inability to copulate with her is demonstrated three times, and I should have thought once was enough…. Meantime, Nicholas Rubenstein … is reduced to a wisp of waspishness with barely any acknowledgment of his more benevolent moments in Tchaikovsky's career, and brother Modeste only once abandons spite for a hint of the affection and understanding that have been attributed to him in certain reference works. A number of things might aggravate sticklers for known fact, and fervently scholarly musicians: not least the derision with which Modeste supplies the name 'Pathetic' for the Sixth Symphony (the nuance of the word might well have been tender), and the indication in the same sequence that Tchaikovsky drank contaminated water intentionally, virtually committing suicide; possibly of lesser consequence is the implication that Mme von Meck withdrew her favours when she learned of Tchaikovsky's homosexuality, whereas some of her actual letters to him seem to suggest that she knew about it all along. (pp. 47-8)
This is a free excerpt of 419 words. There are 503 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Russell, Ken 1921–: Critical Essay by Gordon Gow Access Pass.
