Synopsis
The Music Lovers (1971) is Ken Russell's fever-dream portrait of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — watch it online on iFILM. Richard Chamberlain plays the composer and Glenda Jackson plays Nina, the woman he married for reasons that had nothing to do with love.
Tchaikovsky needs a respectable life and a wife seems like the solution. Nina falls for him with an intensity he cannot return. Meanwhile his wealthy patron Nadezhda von Meck funds his work on a single condition — they never actually meet in person. That arrangement suits him far better than his marriage.
Russell had no interest in a tidy biographical account and it shows: the film is excessive, sometimes genuinely unhinged. But the music underneath — the First Piano Concerto, the Sixth Symphony — keeps it anchored even when the images go off the rails. Stream The Music Lovers (1971) on iFILM.
Starring
Comments 0