[tps_title]6. Lisztomania (1975)[/tps_title]
Dir. Ken Russell
During his heyday, noted piano genius Franz Liszt caused such hysteria among female audience members during his concerts that the phenomenon was labeled an actual medical condition known as “Lisztomania.” Over a hundred years later director Ken Russell would use this as the springboard for his musical of the same name starring Roger Daltrey of The Who as the eponymous Liszt. The film argues that Liszt lived the rock star lifestyle decades before the advent of rock music with insane parties and a lascivious appetite for women. Russell employs a frantic stream-of-consciousness style that bounces between extraordinary set-pieces and production numbers with gleeful abandon. One minute Liszt will be riding a ten foot…*ahem*…”member” into a giant guillotine, the next he’ll be piloting a weaponized piano equipped with flamethrowers to destroy a vampiric Richard Wagner, and the next he’ll be flying a pipe organ spaceship to stop “Wagner-Hitler” from massacring all of Berlin’s Jews.
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