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“The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that that Messiah is to stand as a God to be worshiped. He is to bring peace on earth, to build up the waste places–to comfort the broken-hearted, but nowhere is he spoken of as a deity.”—Olympia Brown

DIRECTED BY: Ken Russell

FEATURING: Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Robert Powell, Tina Turner, Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Barry Winch

PLOT: Tommy witnesses the murder of his WWII fighter-pilot father at the hands of his mother and step-father, who demand silence. The boy obliges, becoming wholly unresponsive to stimuli, aside from touch. When Tommy happens upon a pinball machine in a junkyard, he soon rockets to fame and messianic adulation from rebellious youths countrywide.

BACKGROUND:

• The Who’s Tommy hit number two on the UK charts, going Gold within four months. Ken Russell did not care much for the music, but was intrigued by the ideas explored in the double album.
• Russell’s Tommy was a box-office smash, garnering two Academy Award nominations (for Best Actress and Best Score).
• George Lucas was slated to direct Tommy but opted instead to develop his own film, American Graffiti.
• Every pinball machine featured in the film predates the original album’s release date of 1969.
• Elton John refused the role of “Pinball Wizard” until he was promised the oversized Doc Marten boots worn by the character.
• Mick Jagger, Tiny Tim, and David Bowie were considered for the role of the Acid Queen before Tina Turner was signed on.
• Every actor performs their own vocals—some more capably than others.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: At the height of his powers—and that would include the year of Tommy‘s release—Ken Russell made nothing but indelible images. But for stylistic and thematic reasons (not to mention sheer poetic excess), Tommy’s ordeal as he is installed within a syringe-imbued iron maiden during Tina Turner’s blow-out performance takes at least as much of the cake as any of the other wonders blaring on the screen.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Chrome-twinkling sex drug and rock ‘n’ roll body cage; a flood of beans fit for a queen

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The Who provide the blaring wall of sound, Ken Russell’s crew manifest the blazing visuals, and a crack squad of heavy-hitter, top-of-their-game actors provide impressively calibrated bombastic characters, making for an audio-visual adventure that giddily drags you through a bonanza of immoderation. All somehow within the bounds of a “PG” rating.

Trailer for Tommy (1975)

COMMENTS: When you have a narrative that is as flimsy as it is outlandish, one way to make it work is cover it with lights, champagne, mirrors—and baked beans. Ken Russell does this, and more, with Tommy. That isn’t to say there isn’t meat to this story—just that it’s pulverized, crushed, bent, pulled, and scratched; simultaneously too much and too little. But that description, though perhaps accurate, is inapt. There’s method here delivering this madness; a madness that could probably only descend to Earth when The Who’s, Ken Russell’s, and 1970s zeitgeist’s stars aligned to bring unto the world a deaf, dumb, and blind pinball savior.

The setting sun glows like an orange pinball, silhouetting Captain Walker before he descends the peak to take in cocoa with his wife. They frolic in the cascading water, they kiss passionately amidst the verdure, and, off-screen, they conceive a son. This boy’s story is now known far and wide: witness to a horrible tragedy, he is rendered nearly insensible, or so it would seem. His journey through a cosmically detached boyhood into young manhood is punctuated by visions of his father and various glowing orbs culminates with a visit to the Church of Marilyn, where his desperate mother seeks the icon’s blessing to bring Tommy back to his senses. On the cusp of adulthood, he faces trials, mysteries, and miracles.

Tommy features plenty of unlikely scenarios, though the choice of Roger Daltrey as lead is bold even amidst the cavalcade of bold decisions which were made. Daltrey isn’t much of an actor, but that’s okay seeing as Tommy isn’t much of a character. Indeed, the first two-thirds of this extravaganza are focused primarily on the boy’s mother. Ann-Margret gives it her all, somehow maintaining believabilitly even during a torrential wash of baked beans. Daltrey’s look fits the extreme sets and scenarios he finds himself in, for that matter: his blank-or-grinning visage shining like a beacon beneath a thicket of curly hair. Along for the ride we also find Oliver Reed, always dripping with greasy charm, and performing with a  calculated grandiosity. All actors involved impressively evince belief in their characters despite the tinfoil-thin roles.

There are plenty of stars studding this ten-layer cake, but one in particular stands out. (Elton John, of course, also stands out—particularly as he performs on a pinball keyboard whilst shod in four-foot-high Doc Martens—but that’s his life’s role, and not especial to his delightful appearance in Tommy.) In a cinematic-history-making performance as the Gypsy Acid Queen, Tina Turner explodes on the screen. Up a set of stairs, up and down a long mattress-roofed loft, and into a set of the freakiest armor to hit the big screen, we and Tommy endure a no-holds-barred smash through a drug-addled gauntlet of passage. Turner belts her machinations like a banshee, and, already having defined herself as one of the great singer-performers of the age on vinyl, cements this reputation vibrantly on celluloid.

Ken Russell, credited with writing the screenplay, obviously is the guiding hand here, and while he cannot (and indeed, should not) help himself when it comes to going overboard with his directorial tendencies, he is still very much in control of everything. He tucks in symmetry: Captain Walker’s plane-crash injury scars are mirrored by a young groupie’s stage-crash injury; recurring motifs: obviously we see orbs everywhere, but a studied look at the mother’s posh, white-white room reveals its ensnaring circularity; and overarching themes: anti-establishment left, right, and center, as we’d expect, but coupled with a love of uniforms, as Tommy’s mother begins with a military man and falls into the arms of Frank and his green “Bernie’s” jacket.

Tommy is obviously Pete Townsend’s baby (and by extension, The Who’s), but Ken Russell is the midwife here, and he shapes the story for the screen. The cause disastre in the film version comes across more as an unfortunate accident—manslaughter, at worst—endured by all parties involved. The implications are, perhaps, made more randomly cosmic for this fact, and more appropriate for something so nebulous as a messiah’s cataclysm. The mother’s mental collapse stems in part from guilt, but also a fury at the whims of fate. Frank comes across more as an opportunist than an evil force: witness his attempts throughout to bond with the afflicted lad, and his (fairly) regular desire to make his wife happy. And Tommy, sliding along life’s periphery because of the tragedy until his equally inexplicable recovery, has not learned much to speak of, landing head-first into his unfathomable role.

Of course, there runs a real risk of over-interpretation of something as overstuffed Tommy. There’s so much going on, and so many chefs in the kitchen. But this is in keeping with any holy origin story; they’re invariably the best ideas of all the parties involved held together by the precarious through-line of the story’s protagonist. Wondrous sights and sounds, improbable twists and non-sequitur asides, and the loosely tied vignettes all add up to a jumble of tones and an abundance of energy as the unfettered creatives proselytize an ambiguous truth and condemn various societal ills along the way. Ken Russell’s Pete Townsend’s the Who’s Tommy is a cross-tided wave of zeal, as befits a phenomenon of Biblical proportions.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Ken Russell, who’s made a specialty of films about musicians (Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Liszt), says Tommy is the greatest work of art the twentieth century has produced. He was almost certainly misquoted. What he meant to say was that it was a heaven-sent opportunity for him to exercise his gift for going too far, for creating three-ring cinematic circuses with kinky sideshows…. Tommy’s odyssey through life is punctuated by encounters with all sorts of weird folks, of whom the most seductive is Tina Turner as the Acid Queen.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (contemporaneous)

“One thing is sure: there has never been a movie musical quite like Tommy, a weird, crazy, wonderfully excessive version of The Who’s rock opera.”–Jay Cocks, Time (contemporaneous)

IMDB LINK: Tommy (1975)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Pete Townsend discusses filming Tommy — The Who co-founder, guitarist, and chief songwriter chats with the LA Times in this 2010 interview

Interview with Ann-Margret — Roger Ebert sits down with the actress who played Tommy’s mother

Roger Daltrey Interviewed 1975— Vintage footage from “Wonderama” shortly after Tommy‘s release; Daltrey explains to host Bob McCallister what a centaur means to him

Film Review Digest Annual (1975) – A smattering of astonished contemporaneous reviews, many commenting on the theatrical gimmick of “quintaphonic” sound

LIST CANDIDATE: TOMMY (1975) — This site’s original List Candidate review

HOME VIDEO INFO: Tommy‘s 50th Anniversary Edition (viewed for this review-buy) is probably the ultimate treatment for image and soundtrack. The 4K transfer from an original 35mm negative (and an original 35mm interpositive) is stunning, with director Ken Russell’s and cinematographer Dick Bush’s colors and shapes popping from the (appropriately equipped) screen. The sound options include 5.1 surround sound, a “5.0 Quintaphonic” option—left unexplored—and the original, wonderful 2.0 stereophonic: the latter of which blared crisply and cleanly from my Marantz amplifier through Yamaha PA speakers.

Unfortunately, those seeking anything by way of extras will be be disappointed, as Shout! Factory’s new edition has nothing along that line—which appears to be in keeping with prior, less 4K’d releases. Alas, perhaps, but Tommy stands on its own as a cinematic pyrotechnic; and half a century after its theatrical debut, it has never looked or sounded this glorious.

The film is also available on-demand for purchase or rental.

Where to watch Tommy