The Music Lovers

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The Music Lovers

R,

1971,

2h 3m,

Drama/

LGBTQ+

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Watchlist

59%

17 Reviews

Tomatometer

74%

500+ Ratings

Popcornmeter

59%

Tomatometer

17 Reviews

74%

Popcornmeter

500+ Ratings

Composer Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain), sees his wife (Glenda Jackson) go mad and dies of cholera.

Stefan Kanfer

TIME Magazine

Jan 14, 2019

No matter how miserable his actual life, the classical composer tends to suffer in a new way on film.

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Vincent Canby

New York Times

Jan 14, 2019

Although Tchaikovsky died of cholera, for which a hot bath was prescribed, the implication of "The Music Lovers" is that he was simply boiled to death, which is what the movie does to his genius.

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Trevor Johnston

Time Out

Jan 14, 2019

Vulgar, excessive, melodramatic and self-indulgent: Tchaikovsky's music is indeed all of these things, yet gloriously so, and the same goes for Ken Russell at his freewheeling best.

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Eddie Harrison

film-authority.com

Jun 27, 2024

5/5

…Ken Russell’s flamboyant work generally divided critics and audiences, but if you’re a fan of his strident, attention-grabbing style, this amped-up version of The Music Lovers is enough to make pearl-clutchers go wild…

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Richard R. Harmetz

Los Angeles Free Press

Jan 13, 2020

Ken Russell's film is so rich that its Romanticism goes against many of today's terse, almost documentary movies.

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TV Guide Staff

TV Guide

Jan 14, 2019

Don't bother seeing this; just buy a few albums of music by Tchaikovsky and let it go at that.

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Ron G

Oct 25, 2018

Ostensibly like Tchaikovsky's own (and especially later) music, the film vacillates wildly in tone, shifting from scenes of intense and serious passion to moments ebullient and blithe-unlike Tchaikovsky, however, Russell's film fails to strike a balance among the extremes and ends up being rather pathetic in the end. The topsy-turvy tonality fails to achieve the melodramatic import of lived experience that Tchaikovsky's work aspires to, instead coming across as ironic, inauthentic kitsch-the furthest thing from the romanticism at the heart of the music itself. Tellingly enough, the best sequences-the drunken sex scene in the train, in particular, which is absolutely fabulous-are those that embrace Russell's characteristic ironic bathos, exposing the vulgar absurdity at the hidden core of 19th Century sensibilities, rather than the more generic temptation here to see in Tchaikovsky an analogue for queer experience today.

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Ken Russell

Director

Richard Chamberlain

Tchaikovsky

Glenda Jackson

Nina (Antonina Milyukova)

Max Adrian

Nicholas Rubinstein

Christopher Gable

Count Anton Chiluvsky

Kenneth Colley

Modeste Tchaikovsky

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Synopsis

Composer Tchaikovsky (Richard Chamberlain), sees his wife (Glenda Jackson) go mad and dies of cholera.

Director: Ken Russell
Producer: Ken Russell
Screenwriter: Melvyn Bragg, Catherine Drinker Bowen, Barbara von Meck
Distributor: United Artists
Production Co: Russ-Arts
Rating: R
Genre: Drama, LGBTQ+
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Jan 24, 1971, Original
Release Date (Streaming): Mar 13, 2017
Runtime: 2h 3m
Sound Mix: Mono

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