The 1970s were a wild time for experimental filmmaking, with The Who’s Tommy standing as the decade’s most off-the-wall, star-studded cinematic event. As an adaptation of the legendary rock opera that sprang from the mind of songwriter extraordinaire Pete Townshend, Tommy started as a hugely influential double record before being adapted for the big screen in a surreal display of outrageous spectacle by the British director Ken Russell. Telling the story of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who sure plays a mean pinball, the psychedelic fantasy of Tommy captured music culture at a very strange time.
As a bizarre odyssey through post-war Britain as seen through the lens of a traumatized young boy without the use of most of his primary senses, Tommy took a seemingly unfilmable album and turned it into a cult favorite movie exploring religious fanaticism, blind belief, and the interplay between self and illusion. With a narrative that plays out entirely through song, Tommy features some of the biggest musicians of the 1970s, who show up as increasingly idiosyncratic characters. While Tommy might be too strange for some, for those willing to give themselves over to it, it’s truly an amazing journey.
The Who’s Tommy Was A Star-Studded Spectacle With Appearances From A Range Of 1970s Icons
Tommy’s Cast List Is A Who’s Who Of Music Legends
With The Who’s frontman, Roger Daltrey, in the тιтle role and the rest of the band featured prominently throughout the film, Tommy not only included one of the best bands of the 1970s, but they were also joined by many of their contemporaries. From Eric Clapton showing up as the guitar-playing leader of a Marilyn Monroe-worshipping cult to Jack Nicholson briefly appearing as a questionable doctor who’s more interested in wooing Tommy’s mother than he is in curing his ailments, practically every scene of Tommy featured an all-time great icon.
Elton John paraded around a stage in four-and-a-half-foot-high boots as he pᴀssionately sang The Who’s hit single “Pinball Wizard.”
In one of the most bizarre sequences of Tommy, Elton John paraded around a stage in four-and-a-half-foot-high boots as he pᴀssionately sang The Who’s hit single “Pinball Wizard.” The Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tina Turner, embraced her sinister side to play The Acid Queen, an erratic prosтιтute administering LSD to Tommy in an effort to break him out of the sensory-deprived prison he had found himself in. It’s hard to think of any other movie this strange that includes this many A-list stars.
As muddled, incomprehensible, and overproduced as Tommy was, it was also a fascinating time capsule into the excesses of the 1970s. By focusing on the grand spectacle and guest appearances, Tommy leaned into themes of the corruption of faith in favor of gaudy, grandiose spectacle that pushed mainstream cinema to its absolute limits. With so much outrageous imagery packed into every scene, it would be easy for Tommy to collapse under the weight of its own absurdity if it were not propped up by some of the best music The Who ever made.
Tommy Wasn’t The Only Who Album To Be Made Into A Cult Favorite Film
The Who’s Quadrophenia Was Also Adapted For The Screen In 1979
Tommy wasn’t the only Who album that received the big screen treatment, as their rock opera Quadrophenia was also turned into a movie. However, unlike the over-the-top musical extremities that Ken Russell embraced with Tommy, Quadrophenia instead featured a cast of mostly unknown actors portraying fashionable, drug-taking teenage mods in 1960s London. As a classic of British cinema that powerfully showcased the early days of Swinging London and the different subcultures that contributed to it, Quadrophenia even helped kickstart the mod revival of the 1980s led by bands like The Jam, Secret Affair, and The Style Council.
Quadrophenia did feature one music icon, as Sting was cast as the stylish mod trendsetter known as the Ace Face.
While Tommy had grand ambitions to translate psychedelic music to the screen in a way audiences had never seen before, Quadrophenia was a much more grounded movie about the disillusionment of trying to fit in, the pain of unrequited love, and the fractured idenтιтy of a mentally troubled teenager named Jimmy. As two films that couldn’t be more different from one another, both Tommy and Quadrophenia captured the essence of the albums they were based on and stand as must-watch releases of alternative 1970s cinema.
