Tommy

The story concerns a child who witnesses his father being murdered by his mother and lover. His mother (who works in a ball-bearing factory) tells him not to tell what he saw or heard, so he becomes deaf, dumb and blind. He does have one gift, he can play pinball. The pinballs are identical to the ball-bearings from his mother's factory, and to the device later put in his eyes at the instigation of the doctor, Jack Nicholson. Tommy becomes a messiah figure to his followers until they realise they also have to become deaf, dumb and blind.

The film is based around an LP. It was becoming fashionable to produce theme LPs and Pete Townsend surpassed most by coming up with a story line (even if it at times does not fit). The story is inspired by the blues song Eyesight for the Blind by Sonny Boy Williamson, with the most famous song Pinball Wizard added to ensure there was a hit single.

The film is a series of visual images.

	In the church Marilyn Monroe replaces the Virgin Mary.  Under her statue blondes in Monroe masks give the sacrament of whisky and pills.
	But she turns out to be a fallen idol.
	Tommy rejects this religion, and Tina Turner's attempt to awaken his senses with sex and drugs also fails. "If your child ain't all he should be now, this girl will put him right. I'll show him what he could be now, just give me one more night".

Tommy emerges and becomes the new messiah with a mass following.
His parents exploit this.

The scene is based on the Who's LP "The Who Sell Out" where Daltry appears eating Heinz Beans etc to attack commercialism. Russell himself did advertisements for baked beans and soap suds (in his advert, to show how the soap suds simply disappeared down the sink he filmed the suds being pumped into the sink then reversed the film).

Daltry underwater almost drowned before the crew realised he was in trouble and dived in to help him.  Daltry burnt himself when running through the fire and the later takes show him holding his injured arm.

Most spectacularly when filming on Southsea pier a fire broke out seriously damaging the pier.  Ken used film of the real fire in part of Daltry´s running through fire sequence.

Other rock stars such as Elton John (Pinball Wizard) and Tina Turner (the Acid Queen) are spectacular in their video segments. Elton John was a possibility for a role in Ken Russell's Rainbow before he chickened out.

Eric Clapton (left) was too drugged out so Arthur Brown was brought in to make the scene more interesting.  Oliver Reed appears as the Father, Ann-Margret as the mother (she was nominated for an Oscar for the role). Jack Nicholson is the doctor.  Ken Russell's daughter (right) plays Sally.

Editing is by Stuart Baird. Cinematography is by Dick Bush and Ronnie Taylor. Costumes are by Shirley Russell.  Ken used in total a crew of 88. Tommy cost $2 million and took 22 weeks to shoot.

Russell can be seen in a wheelchair in one scene.

The church worshipping Marilyn Monroe with the row of Marilyns walking down the church aisle.

Dancers in gas masks in the London blitz sequences.  The war sequences were originally going to be black and white.

Running through the fields.

There are snakes crawling on a skeleton.

Daltry appears in a number of Christ images including crucifixion, walking on water, and walking on the beach with the fishermen (I will make you fishers of men).

He descends on Hells Angels from the air (a heavens angel), here reflected in the glasses.

The "cure" imagery is similar to that in Kubrick´s A Clockwork Orange.

Lisztomania

A Golem/Frankenstein creature (Wagner, killed by Liszt and resurrected by his daughter Cosima) with an electric guitar that is actually a machine gun walks through a ghetto slaughtering Jews, accompanied by children wearing superman-like clothes. Cosima sees a face through a swastika-shaped window and pulls out a voodoo doll and pierces it with a pin to kill the person. Yes, clearly the story of the composer Liszt.

A cheap looking cash-in on Tommy, though Russell says it cost over a million pounds- one of his highest budgets. Roger Daltry´s acting is especially poor even for him.

It is basically a sex comedy though it is not very funny. The concert sequence with squealing girls dressed like Jane Austen is too long and the film collapses into banality.

Typical of Russell, there is a basis in truth. The worst element is the pretentious modern title Lisztomania- but this is actually the title of a book published in Liszt's time.

Another view by site visitor Steve Mobia (thanks Steve) is:

"A constant stream of visual imagination, LisztOmania is the most unconventional and unique of Ken Russell's output.

Whereas the films of Mahler and Tchaikovsky had flashes of brilliance (the 1812 overture scene in The Music Lovers, the conversion scene in Mahler for instance), with Liszt, Russell finds the freedom for full unhinged expression. It must take the cake as the most peculiar biography ever made about a classical composer. The real world Liszt was a master show off, turned the keyboard toward the audience and performed diminished seventh runs as if possessed by the devil. Russell's film depicts Liszt as the first classical "pop star," complete with fanatical pubescent fans (with fans) and groupies. The movie darts in and out of music and film references, historic fact and allegory — all presented in a hyberbolic comic strip fashion. Yes it's often tasteless and crude but that's all a part of the fun.

Though The Devils is arguably Russell's greatest film in both structure and substance, LizstOmania, though not a very well structured movie is dazzling in its audacity. The picture is a must-see for any music student!"

Stuart Baird edits and cinematography is by Peter Suschitzky.  Shirley Russell does costumes.

Not an image but a piece of dialogue, obviously Russell's- "time kills critics my dear".

Two of the Russian icon paintings of saints are actually paintings of Elvis and Pete Townsend.

the Chaplin sequence

The tsarina is similar to the doll in Gothic.

Daltry in his skimpy loin cloth is often a Christ image

Valentino

A biography of the silent film actor Valentino ("The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"). The film starts with Valentino´s funeral and the mass hysteria at the time, then continues as a series of flashbacks in the style of Citizen Kane.

Valentino is a club dancer who gets in trouble with the mob and with the entertainment industry. His foreignness is used against him (whoever heard of a dago playing a dago) and his appeal to women causes resentment and allegations of homosexuality. His reputation grows as a cinema star and as a lover. Women adore him but continually men insult him (pink powder puff).

Finally he is tricked into a boxing match with a journalist who turns out to have been boxing champion in the marines.

In genuinely exciting scenes Valentino is continually pummelled to the ground, till eventually his opponent grabs him, barely conscious, and dances him round the ring. He is only saved by the bell.

In true Rocky fashion after the bell Valentino comes out and unexpectedly has found strength and turns the fight round, grabbing his opponent and dancing, up to the knock-out. Valentino has saved his honour.

At his funeral an actress comes to his coffin and faints. The cameramen have missed it, so she revives, goes to the coffin again and faints again, this time front page news.

The film is edited well with fast pacing but a good control of the story. It is however too long, 30 minutes shorter would improve it.

The imagery is good.

The film was a major commercial failure.

Cinematography is again by Peter Suschitzky and editing by Stuart Baird. Shirley Russell does the costumes.

The script is by Russell and Mardik Martin, who also contributed to Mean Streets, New York New York and Raging Bull for Scorsese.  The basis is a pulp fiction biography of Valentino by Brad Steiger.  An example of Russell's vision is the scene at the beginning of the book and film where the screaming fans break through the glass of the funeral parlour.  In the book the windows are then boarded up with planks of wood.  Russell's film changes the planks of wood to coffin lids.

Lindsay Kemp the dancer plays the mortician.

Russell appears briefly as the director

The vulture on a stone in the desert filming scene.

When Valentino gets revenge by seducing in a dance Mr Fatty´s girl.

When the mobster beats up Valentino and the girl shoots the mobster. Three scenes developing the plot pass in ten seconds.

The period fans in the cinema are identical to those in Lisztomania. There is a very unconvincing madhouse scene which is a cheap copy of Glenda Jackson's harrowing scene in The Music Lovers.

The child wears a sailor costume.

There are films within a film, as well as the childrens swing.

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