"Music of passion" is a biopic about (the last thirty years) of the life of the Russian classical composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
The film is told in series of more or less independent episodes. Maybe for every Russian the story of the life of Tchaikovsky is well known, but for Western eyes this way of telling the story is a little confusing.
It is generally believed that Tchaikovsky was a homosexual, but in the Russia of 1970 it was still difficult to be frank about this fact (as it still is in the Russia of 2021 I think). More surprising to me was the fact that in Russia Tschaikovsky is mainly seen as a composer of opera's and not so much of symphonies. The opera's of "Jevgeni Onjegin" and "Queen of spades" play an important role in the film.
As may be expected in a biopic about a composer the music is very beautiful. The cinematography is also OK, especially in the scene with the coach riding through a birch forest (the symbol of Russia's vastness). There is however nothing more kindly to report about this film. The acting is rigid and the dialogue is bombastic.
All in all "Music of passion" is no match for other biopics about composers such as "Amadeus" (1984, Milos Forman, about Mozart) or "Immortal beloved" (1994, Bernard Rose, about Beethoven). I saw "Music for passion" in a program with three films from Russia in the movie house of the city where I live. With directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, Mikhail Kalatozov and Andrei Tarkovsky I I really wondered if "Music of passion" was the right choice for this program.
