Tommy

Featuring a host of music icons other than The Who such as Sir Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, as well as big movie stars Oliver Reed, five time golden globe winner Ann-Margaret and Jack Nicholson, appearing a few months before the release of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. This film was way ahead of its time upon release and Ken Russell’s production still holds up well today. It’s different, it’s strange, it’s not normal, but what’s normal today? Never mind 45 years ago!

I've just finished reading Roger Daltrey's autobiography (Thanks a lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story - free on Prime Reading at the moment!) and spotted that this was available on Netflix (UK at the time of writing) so had to watch it. I was expecting something a bit out there and this delivered on that front. Overall it was fun to watch but I prefer the album itself.

Too seventies and psychedelic for me.

Yes, this is a train wreck and certainly not what many Who fans had in their heads as they listened to the original 1969 album of the same name.

But there's a method to director Ken Russell's madness -- and IMHO he made a successful visual pop-art adaption of Townshend's story. Even Who bassist John Entwistle said, "I never knew what the story was until I saw Ken's film."

There's visual allegory and symbolism galore in this thing and my personal favorites are how the opening and closing images bring the whole story full circle. Pinballs on top of crosses, in the armament factory Nora Walker works in. Red remembrance poppies. British air bombers as crosses. Marilyn Monroe as modern goddess to be worshipped. And on and on....

As for the actual music on the soundtrack - it's very much of its time and Pete Townshend threw on as much synthesizer as he could to make up for the lack of production on the original Who album. It doesn't exactly rock, but for the purpose of this film it works.

Any fan of the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard needs to give this a watch. If you compare this to later rock concept album adaptations like "Pink Floyd's The Wall" it still stands up remarkably well.