Word: diaghilev
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...Picasso of 1918-24 was made for this situation. With ebullience, he threw himself into the role of the maestro, designing sets and costumes for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, marrying one of its dancers, and allowing a conventional style of portraiture, often as insipid as the $3 million Acrobat sold to Japan in last week's Garbisch auction, to alternate with a highly decorative form of cubism. "Decorative," of course, is no longer a cuss word, and his best flat-pattern cubist paintings of the early '20s, with their gravely shuttling collage-like overlaps of bright and dark color...
...film waxes ambiguous: Does Diaghilev's action depend on Nijinsky's choreographic incompetence--is he dropped "for the good of the company," as the previous choreographer was? Oris Diaghilev merely prone to the pangs of lost love? Unfortunately, any depiction of the company proves incidental; Nijinsky fails to convey much sense of excitement, or even of the life-style, of the Ballets Russes. Ross and screenwriter Hugh Wheeler seem determined not to tell a story about people who dance, but a love story about people who just happen to dance...
...film crew) indicates a warm ovation. The sole exception, and the sole excitement, occurs during a disastrous premiere, Shocked by the unorthodox choreography, a raucous audience tosses programs at the stage; as the catcalls drown out the music, Nijinsky shouts the beats to dancers from the wings, while Diaghilev tries to calm the crowd out front...
...well-rounded portrayal of the man who opts to be "the old monster" to his troupe, declaring "If I listened to my heart, it would break." Without resorting to flaming mannerisms, Bates suggests perfectly the character's homosexuality; he touches women, even when affectionate, with a reserved disinterest. Admittedly, Diaghilev has all the good lines; chiding Nijinsky for eating too much candy, he warns, "Nobody loves a fat faun...
...insanity increases, he babbles of a simple life on the farm. But this theme of Nijinsky's fatigue with a decadent life remains sketchy, and the script in general botches character development. After painstaking suggestions of Nijinsky's growing interest in the opposite sex--he asks Diaghilev to describe what sleeping with women is like, indulges in a lengthy kiss with a ballerina--the film presents his marriage to Romola as hysterical revenge on his mentor...