Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The food of love

issue 23 June 2007

‘Painting with money’ is how Michael Winner described making films. And if the money runs out you can always turn your script into a novel. Ken Russell’s Beethoven Confidential was to have starred Anthony Hopkins in the title role with Glenda Jackson and Jodie Foster as a couple of swooning aristos eager to sponsor the fuming maestro. Quite how that Oscar-encrusted team ran out of backers is a mystery Russell doesn’t address. And his prose still bears the traces of its celluloid origins:

Chapter Two. Moonlight filtering through elegant windows hints at surroundings of great luxury. In silhouette, a pretty teenager is seated at the piano playing music that seems to be a manifestation of the atmosphere itself.

The effect is the opposite of a film. Instead of intimacy and fluency there’s a stilted fussiness as Russell gets all the details of his shot just right.

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