A Film by Ken Russell

Watching Ken Russell’s film about Delius with the most beautiful woman in the world the other weekend I was again amazed at its effectiveness at conveying a period - the 1930s - and of the composer, who was an enigma unto himself, and a complete mystery to the rest of us.

And I say that as a man who has written and directed a play about Delius, and his meeting with Elgar in 1934, but who nevertheless felt he’d only scratched the surface of one of England’s greatest composers, a composer who often denied his Englishness anyway, living outside the country all of his adult life, yet nonetheless sometimes considered himself a Yorkshireman but never a German, and he was both, but of wholly German parentage; and perhaps within that lies the mystery which his beautiful music adds to because it is itself a mystery in that it doesn’t seem to belong anywhere geographical, but everywhere emotionally - and emotion in music is an important but often dangerous thing.

The film, made for the BBC in 1968, is a small masterpiece that really does make you think you are in the claustrophobic Delius household, and sometimes within the claustrophobic mind of the composer who, because of his paralysis and blindness is now unable to compose, a condition the young Yorkshireman, Eric Fenby ( a charming man I had the honour to meet in the early 1990s), reads about in the press, which results in his travelling to France to try and help Delius with some unfinished scores.

And at the heart of this remarkable film is the tortuous journey that Fenby and Delius have to make before they discover not only trust, but a practical way in which they can work together that allows Delius to express himself and Fenby to get it all down. These scenes are the most moving in the whole film as Delius calls out the notation and for which instrument or groups of instruments the notation is for. And as the two men work, initially in a frenzy of misunderstanding ( Delius was taught German notation in Leipzig which confuses Fenby), which slowly becomes an understanding of intent, we begin to hear the music and watch as Delius hears it to in his head. It is great emotional cinema that matches the emotion of the music superbly well.

The performance of Max Adrian as Delius is remarkable, as are those of Maureen Pryor as his wife Jelka, and Christopher Gable as Fenby.

It was also good to see again the old bath-chair the BBC allowed me to use for my own play about Delius, a creaking old thing from the 1910s that had been gathering dust in the BBC props warehouse in Birmingham.

The film is based on Eric Fenby’s book Delius As I Knew Him, which I think is still available from Faber & Faber, with the video of the film available from BBC Films. Get it, it’s worth every minute.

Steve Newman