Viewers here or on YouTube who compliment this film as some sort of wonderful picture of a dancer are seriously misleading. Roger Ebert is absolutely right in his contemporary review when he laments that Nureyev allowed himself to be "talked into" doing such a "lousy movie." There is nothing to it but a narrator who as Ebert says tells us "in the worst Milton Cross Great Moments of Ballet style" only the most obvious and silly things about Nureyev, nothing of interest, nothing we don't know -- plus lengthy clips (at least they're sustained sequences, if badly filmed) of three or four ballets presented more or less randomly without commentary.
Interesting to see Nureyev do modern dance choreography (Glen Tetley's radically modern "Field Figures"). But the music by Stockhausen in the short segment shown is so grating you wonder how he and his female partner could dance to it. Also "notable" is the ballet "Marguerite and Armand" choreographed by Frederick Ashtonbased on Camille (with Fonteyn) created for her and Nureyev by an English choreographer. But it's also laughable, as Ebert remarked, the foolishness highlighted by a "ludicrous Nureyev entrance with cape swirling Lugosi-style." Of historical interest, but hardly worth watching all this ballet. It's remarkable how bad the image quality is of several of these ballet passages in this Seventies film.
The brief "framing" sequences of Nureyev in a dressing room preparing and then taking off makeup and changing back into street clothes after a performance with the tiresome narration are stagy. They are unrevealing and suggest, again as Ebert pointed out at the time, that the filmmakers didn't really know Nureyev -- and did not get to know him.
If you're obsessed with Nureyev, as ballet lovers can hardly help being, you'll have to watch this film for its classic sequences of him dancing, but as a film it ranks low on the scale of the many films about him or containing his dancing. If you haven't much time, watch instead the informative 2007 made-for-TV "Great Performances" series documentary, "Nureyev: The Russian Years," an excellent picture of his brilliant and exciting beginnings and defection to the West, which has essential contemporary film footage of his early dancing, atmospheric recreations, plenty of specific information, and a wealth of on-camera testimony by those who knew him then. "Nureyev: The Russian Years" is an admirable documentary. This is a negligible one.
Interesting to see Nureyev do modern dance choreography (Glen Tetley's radically modern "Field Figures"). But the music by Stockhausen in the short segment shown is so grating you wonder how he and his female partner could dance to it. Also "notable" is the ballet "Marguerite and Armand" choreographed by Frederick Ashtonbased on Camille (with Fonteyn) created for her and Nureyev by an English choreographer. But it's also laughable, as Ebert remarked, the foolishness highlighted by a "ludicrous Nureyev entrance with cape swirling Lugosi-style." Of historical interest, but hardly worth watching all this ballet. It's remarkable how bad the image quality is of several of these ballet passages in this Seventies film.
The brief "framing" sequences of Nureyev in a dressing room preparing and then taking off makeup and changing back into street clothes after a performance with the tiresome narration are stagy. They are unrevealing and suggest, again as Ebert pointed out at the time, that the filmmakers didn't really know Nureyev -- and did not get to know him.
If you're obsessed with Nureyev, as ballet lovers can hardly help being, you'll have to watch this film for its classic sequences of him dancing, but as a film it ranks low on the scale of the many films about him or containing his dancing. If you haven't much time, watch instead the informative 2007 made-for-TV "Great Performances" series documentary, "Nureyev: The Russian Years," an excellent picture of his brilliant and exciting beginnings and defection to the West, which has essential contemporary film footage of his early dancing, atmospheric recreations, plenty of specific information, and a wealth of on-camera testimony by those who knew him then. "Nureyev: The Russian Years" is an admirable documentary. This is a negligible one.