Song of Summer – A Film by Ken Russell

Watching Ken Russell’s film, ‘ Song of Summer’, again recently I found myself enthralled by its effectiveness in conveying the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the enigmatic character of the blind and paralysed English composer, Frederick Delius.

And as someone who has written, produced and directed a play about Delius, but who, nevertheless, still feels he has only a limited understanding of the composer who, for some reason, always denied his Englishness , yet often, and proudly, proclaimed himself a Yorkshireman. He never once thought of himself as German. But he was: born of German parents, in Bradford, Yorkshire.

Maybe within that denial lies the mystery of his beautiful, yet slightly difficult, music, which today sounds very English indeed, but when it was written did not. Today his music
is so emotionally alive that it often feels strangely dangerous.

Ken Russell’s film, made for the BBC in 1968, is a small masterpiece that really does make you think you’re in the claustrophobic Delius household, and sometimes within the claustrophobic mind of the composer who, because of his paralysis and blindness, is unable to compose, a condition the young Yorkshire musician, Eric Fenby, reads about, and, after writing to Delius, finds himself invited to France to try and help Delius.

And it is this that is at the heart of this remarkable film: 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 will allow Delius to express himself and enable Fenby to get it all down on paper.

These scenes are the most moving in the whole film as Delius calls out the notation, and for which instrument or groups of instruments, they are intended. And as the two men work, initially in a frenzy of misunderstanding (Delius was taught German notation which confuses Fenby), there slowly emerges an understanding of intent. Only then do we begin to hear the music, as does Delius. 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 a BBC props warehouse in Birmingham since the making if the film.

The film is based on Eric Fenby’s book ‘Delius As I Knew Him’, which is still available
from Faber & Faber, with the DVD of the film available from BBC Films.