One can only imagine the switchboard at Monitor in the mid 60s after a showing of The Debussy Film, a BBC documentary on the impressionist composer. Viewers settling in for a respectable rendering of the man who composed Clair de Lune get both barrels however of a genius artist and his music to go along with a tawdry personal life of adultery, betrayal, suicide.
The Debussy Film is one of director Ken Russell's earlier bio works that gives clear indication of the outrageous signature style that would inform his film career and the controversial biographies of Tchaikovsky (The Music Lovers) Liszt and Mahler. His taste often questioned, he's never been accused of being dull. Applying Debussy's romantically charged and dissonant music to his sometimes jarring and powerful compositions he both celebrates the artist and deconstructs the man who used and drove lovers over the edge and betrayed benefactors.
A collaborator with Debussy once stated that the only thing Debussy ever loved was himself and possibly his music. If that's the case then the outrageous Mr. Russell has once again come closer to the truth than more sober chroniclers.