Dance of the Seven Veils

This documentary is BRILLIANT! I had the luck of seeing Ken Russel speak and present three of his films at a film festival last year. My friend and I got an interview with him for a news article, he told us the whole story about the Strauss estate. Apparently he swiped a copy of the original reel, and has been carrying it around ever since the 70's. The film depicts Strauss having a picnic with Hitler (because of his supposed connections with the Nazi party) and letting Hitler ride upon his shoulders as they frolic through a feild, handing out Strauss' records which have a swastikas in the centers.

The music goes so well with the scenes, it was a long documentary but I laughed almost all the way through it. I hope others are able to see it eventually.

At least, I hope so. Since the expiration of the copyright ban from the Strauss estate, I know there have been showings. If anyone knows of a DVD release, I would keep it to yourself.

Poor quality clips are available to give the flavour. Given Russell produced excellent Omnibus films about Delius and Debussy, he had good taste in music. His cinema films about Mahler, Liszt, Tchaikovsky etc were somewhat different in tone.

I wish Russell had waited a while to try a film about Strauss, as he would have learned that the composer was not a Nazi sympathiser. As a major composer and conductor well into his seventies, he was pressured by the new Nazi government, but was sympathetic to the Jewish population, as half his family were Jewish, through marriage. He was able to aid some Jewish family members; he undoubtedly saved his Jewish grandchildren from being sent to death camps. Put under pressure for working with Jewish writers and musicians, he was eventually dismissed from official posts.

Russell's scenes of a goose stepping Hitler and Goebbels at a picnic, being serenaded by Strauss are a travesty. There are other random scenes that are laughable from a supposedly professional director, i.e., using the same music Kubrick used in 2001 A Space Odyssey, Also Sprach Zarathustra, for a risible scene of cavorting cavemen.

Diaries and notebooks have since emerged showing that the Nazis tolerated his presence because of his cultural significance and connections, but privately despised him, and might 'dispense with him if he became of no use; Goebbel's notebooks labelled Strauss a 'decadent neurotic'- the very class of artistic intellectual that was often banned and ostracized. Strauss's own diary entry calls Goebbels a 'pipsqueak'. Strauss thus may only have survived further sanctions due to his great age, international reputation, and having worked in German musical circles since 1885.

This film deserves to be buried again, for traducing the memory of a revered composer and conductor. Ken Russell's career was undoubtedly varied, with some highlights, but this could only be one of the several lows.

Russell made his name with a series of biopics about several cultural luminaries for the BBC: initially approached in a pretty straightforward manner (ELGAR {1962}), these became increasingly radical, filled to the brim with outrageous ideas teetering on the edge of taste, and culminating in this fantasia (actually referred to as a "comic strip" in a sub-title!) on the life and works of German composer Richard Strauss – which necessitated a disclaimer at the start of the program about the disturbing nature of some of the images that were to follow! While he had already branched out into feature film-making and would famously tackle another trio of composers within that format (namely Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Liszt), this one lasts just under an hour – but the resulting barrage is so potent as to be overwhelming nonetheless!

Incidentally, the presentation is far from optimal: constantly accompanied by a time-code at the bottom of the screen, the colors of the print on display have faded and acquired a reddish hue, there are a number of odd jump-cuts where the film winds back on itself ever so slightly before resuming, not to mention being intermittently plagued with audio glitches! This has to do with the fact that the film incurred the wrath of the Strauss estate, which effectively blocked subsequent showings; the BBC's own banning of it also led to the severing of their long-standing relationship with the director! In any case, Strauss' melodramatic compositions and the turbulent period in which he was active lends itself well to Russell's mad vision – its 7 episodes (hence the title, but not clearly delineated along the way!) being marked by theatricality, hysteria, violence, death and, of course, sex.

Christopher Gable (a recurring presence in Russell pictures around this time) is impressive and versatile in the lead: running the gamut from his concert-engagement prime to being first feted and then denounced by Hitler and his minions (while the former comes across as rather a prancing Chaplinesque figure, Vladek Sheybal – another striking regular in the director's oeuvre – compensates with a decidedly chilling Goebbels!) to old age, but also taking in burlesque interpretations of a caveman (as with Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY {1968}, set to the strains of Strauss' "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"!), Macbeth, Don Quixote, a dashing cavalry officer (a scene which resolves itself into an extended swashbuckling routine during a stage performance!), etc. Apart from which, he is also beset by historical women that presumably inspired his music at some point (I admit to not being familiar with Strauss' backstory), namely Clytaemnestra, Salome' (played, in anticipation of Luis Bunuel, by two distinct women{!} and a character he would return to in the Oscar Wilde adaptation SALOME'S LAST DANCE {1988}) and Potiphar's wife.

Even so, perhaps the most memorable moments here involve the debasement of religion (with self-flagellating monks, love-starved nuns and the willful abuse of holy icons) and depictions of the Nazis exerting their terror-filled stranglehold (an elderly Jew has the Star of David bloodily carved on his chest inside a packed cinema!) – both of which would come to be Russell trademarks. The final insult is having George Gershwin's "By Strauss" (which had earlier been utilized for the classic MGM musical AN American IN Paris {1951}) jokingly heard here over the closing credits!

P.S. I have since found out that Russell managed to record an Audio Commentary for a proposed DVD edition of this one before the BBC once again chickened out and pulled the plug on its release!