Lisztomania 1975

Through a series of surreal, dreamlike episodes that blend fact, fantasy, and time-bucking anachronisms, the life of the composer Franz Liszt unfolds in a cinematic memory palace. At the outset, Liszt is found in bed with Marie d’Agoult, pursued by her husband, Count d’Agoult, who issues a dare to a sabre duel. In a dark twist, the count’s staff traps Liszt and Marie inside the body of a piano and abandons it on a stretch of railroad tracks. This otherworldly calamity is revealed as a flashback, triggered by a backstage camera flash just before one of Liszt’s concerts.

Backstage, Liszt introduces a circle of legendary figures, including Richard Wagner, to his colleagues: Gioachino Rossini, Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin, and Hans von Bülow. He even pays Wagner to permit a variation on a theme from Rienzi, setting the stage for a clash between crowd-pleasing virtuosity and serious musical craft. The audience—youthful, vocal, and raucous—erupts with excitement as Liszt’s performance explodes in choreographed frenzy, a spectacle that blurs the line between concert and spectacle.

In a maneuver that foreshadows the film’s surreal stakes, Liszt uses von Bülow to test the waters with wealthy admirers in the crowd, and one target emerges: Princess Carolyn, who tenderly gives Liszt her address in Russia. Meanwhile, Liszt and Marie’s domestic life grows tense under the weight of constant touring and Liszt’s infidelities. They raise three children, the eldest of whom is Cosima, a name that will echo through the story’s later chapters.

The narrative pivots on a perilous bargain. Carolyn tempts Liszt with the promise of renewed genius in exchange for control over his life, and in a startling, over-the-top sequence Liszt imagines a court of Carolyn’s women as she watches from a distance. The price of artistic rebirth unfolds before him as the women drag him toward a guillotine, with Carolyn revealing that the bargain requires surrendering his libertinism.

As Dresden erupts in the May Uprising, Liszt wrestles with whether to stand with friends or to retreat into isolation to compose. Rumor and implication mingle: Marie and his two youngest children may have perished, deepening his crisis. Wagner reappears, asking for money, drugs Liszt, and reveals himself as a vampire with a political mission to inspire a new German nationalism. Wagner leaves behind a stark political pamphlet that cheekily nods to Nietzsche’s famous idea, the Superman.

The plot threads pull Liszt toward Rome. He and Carolyn travel to the Vatican to marry after the Pope grants a divorce from her husband, though the wedding is ultimately voided by intervention from the Count and the Tsar. Carolyn, furious, threatens to publish an anthology detailing her conflicts with the church. Liszt, for his part, embraces the ecclesiastical life, joining the church as an abbé.

A bombshell arrives when the Pope informs Liszt that Wagner has married Cosima and now leads a devilish cult centered on his music. Liszt is tasked with exorcising him or risk excommunication and a ban on his own music. He travels to Wagner’s castle, where Wagner and Cosima perform a secret Nazi ritual in Superman costumes, revealing Wagner’s darker ambitions. Wagner unveils himself as a vampire and warns of the theft of Liszt’s music, a confrontation Liszt meets with a musical exorcism.

Cosima then imprisons Liszt and resurrects Wagner in a Frankenstein–Hitler tableau, complete with a machine-gun guitar. The Wagner–Hitler duo advances a brutal, antisemitic mass-killing frenzy through the town, and Liszt is killed by a voodoo doll in a harrowing twist of fate.

In the final act, Liszt’s spirit ascends to Heaven, where he is reunited with the women he loved, including Cosima, and they return to Earth in a spaceship to confront Wagner–Hitler. The film closes on Liszt’s voice, singing that he has found “peace at last.”

peace at last