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Russell also adds a scene of sardonic electronic nightmare, and another of distinctly contemporary celebration. Tommy's mother (Ann-Margret) watches her television set actually spew forth the waste from all its commercials. Baked beans, soapsuds, melted chocolate gush like a lava flow, and, like any good contemporary consumer, she grovels in the mixture. The religious celebration is a faith healing held at the altar of a very modern goddess, Marilyn Monroe. As the crippled faithful rush to receive Communion and touch her effigy —a statue in the image of the famous skirt elevation from The Seven-Year Itch —Eric Clapton, in a priest's raiment, sings Eyesight for the Blind.
If, after even such scenes as these, the movie ultimately fails, it is because all of Russell's invention exposes but does not defeat the daffy banality of Tommy itself. Russell must have known that to mount Tommy as a satire on its own roots would still not increase its stature. Still, he took the best, and perhaps the only course. The movie is splendid to look at, all in gaudy picture-postcard colors. It is acted with appropriate verve by all, including Tina Turner as a down and dirty Acid Queen, an amusingly scrofulous Oliver Reed as Tommy's stepfather, and Jack Nicholson playing a physician who represents a bit of high-class lowlife.
The success of a bit of recycled nostalgia like That's Entertainment prompted a lot of people to ask "Why don't they make good musicals any more?" Well, Tommy is one, although not at all designed to please the taste of folks who wish for the spangled gentility of the '30s and '40s. It is worth keeping in mind that a half-century from now, grandchildren will be looking at Tommy and its inevitable successors, enjoying all the extravagance and wondering about the good old days. Right now Tommy is entertainment, Tommy is the new musical, and it will stand.
∎ Jay Cocks
Ken Russell's first reaction to The Who's recording of Tommy was "Rubbish." But Producer Robert Stigwood, who had bought the rights to the rock opera from Composer Pete Townshend, persisted. It took over a year for Russell to come up with his own more satirical version of Tommy's pinball odyssey, and then there was another problem. A lover of classical music, Ken Russell knew nothing about pop. "I didn't know who Eric Clapton or Elton John was." It was not long before Russell, 47, discovered that pop singers like Roger Daltrey were typecast for his gothic style.
Because Russell hates studios, the cast and crew worked mainly on location. Several parts of England are still bruised from the encounter. In South-sea, he was filming on an old pier that caught fire. Calmly, he moved his crew ashore and kept the cameras rolling on an embarrassed fire brigade trying to put out the blaze with antiquated equipment. In Portsmouth, Russell won permission to film the Marilyn Monroe idolatry scene in the Royal Marines' chapel, but when the commandant saw the worshipers, he tried to stop the production. Russell had hired 200 handicapped extras. "They're the happiest people you could hope to meet," he explained. "They loved being in the movie."