Frederick Delius : Song of Summer (1968)ĭo the words ‘Ken Russell composer biography’ conjure up images of Glenda Jackson rolling naked around a train, or Roger Daltrey pounding the keys against a kaleidoscopic backdrop? OK, there’s nothing wrong with an eye-opening ‘what if’ theory and a smidgen of dramatic licence, but a few more convincing clues along the way might have lifted this film from the mundane to something reasonably powerful.Ĥ. The fabrication for plot purposes of a will leaving all Beethoven’s money to his ‘Immortal Beloved’ sets warning bells ringing that the final unveiling might be unconvincing. And, although this is a gift of a story, Bernard Rose’s film is unexpectedly bland, not to mention historically unsound. Forget about the music, let’s cut to the chase – who was the mysterious unnamed woman with whom he was passionately in love? Anton Schindler, Beethoven’s first biographer and secretary, embarks on a quest for the ‘Immortal Beloved’, taking on the role of detective to track down his friend’s old flames.Īs Beethoven in all his guises – from youthful romantic to older moody composer, blighted by deafness – Gary Oldman is convincing but strangely unmemorable. Ludwig van Beethoven : I mmortal Beloved (1994) If, based on the evidence of photos and written accounts, you’ve always thought of the Russian composer as being small, wiry and with an acidly sharp wit, think again – here he’s tall, muscular, and dismally, dismally dull.ģ. But Stravinsky himself, played by Mads Mikkelsen, presents real problems. Opening with a vivid reconstruction of the riotous Rite of Spring premiere, Jan Kounen’s cinematography is impressive throughout – though, to be honest, any director who can’t make a film about Chanel visually arresting really shouldn’t be in the business. Did Coco Chanel have an affair with Igor Stravinsky?.The film itself is about the meeting of two rather more creative minds – and, subsequently, various bodily parts – as the designer invites the composer and his family to live at her villa near Paris in the 1920s. Hats off to the lateral thinker who came up with the title Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky for a film about Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky. Igor Stravinsky : Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky (2010) Yet interspersed through all the silliness Peter Shaffer reveals, through the mouth of Salieri, genuine insights into the brilliance of Mozart’s music as he unfolds the glories of such works as the Wind Serenade: ‘On the page, just a pulse, like a rusty squeeze box, and then suddenly, high above it, an oboe – a single note hanging there, unwavering, until a clarinet took it over, sweetening into a phrase of such delight, filled with such unfulfillable longing, it seemed I was hearing the voice of God.’Ģ. We learn about his guilty enmity towards Mozart through his confession to a priest: he holds himself responsible for the collapse of Mozart’s health and premature death, and is still eaten up with the realisation that, for all his own devotion to God and the Art of Music, he will never match the genius of the giggling and annoying Mozart (Tom Hulce). Composer Salieri (F Murray Abraham) is a physical and psychological wreck.
We’ll begin with the most famous composer biopic of them all – not the first, but perhaps one of the glossiest and most thought-provoking.
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