After the treatment accorded Mozart in "Amadeus," can Beethoven be far behind? Thus Paul Morrissey's 1988 film, "Beethoven's Nephew," which has yet to play locally in theaters but is now available to the home-video market via the above Image laser issue.
Without question, Beethoven's relations with his brother's son Karl are the stuff of which psychological case studies are made. Transcending mere guardianship, the composer's protective interest in his nephew bordered on the maniacal. Karl was seldom allowed to go anywhere without his uncle - even to boarding school - and when he finally did break away for a term of military service it was only when the old man was on his deathbed.This film does not attempt to explain that obsessiveness. Rather it serves it up in richly cinematic terms that allow the viewer to reach his own conclusions.
Was Karl simply one of many obsessions, like money (tellingly depicted by showing Beethoven charging admission - and carefully counting the receipts - for the privilege of overhearing an impromptu rehearsal) or the imagined infidelities of his sisters-in-law? Was he perhaps trying to preserve the boy from the indiscretions of his own youth, which, following an outburst over one of Karl's sexual encounters, he suggests may have been responsible for his hearing loss?
Historically there is some evidence of Beethoven's syphilis, however inconclusive. Otherwise director Morrissey takes a liberal view of the facts. Witness his re-creation of the premiere of the Ninth Symphony, at which the glowering composer sits oblivious to the performance, smoldering with rage over Karl's appearance with his latest paramour. Or Karl's deliberately letting the old man catch cold and die untreated after his own attempted suicide. (According to eyewitnesses, he remained at his uncle's bed administering aid and comfort right along with the doctors until his departure for boot camp.)
But the feeling and appearance of early 19th-century Vienna are captured unerringly (and all the more sharply on laser), as are the composer's relations with his public. Subservient officials, fawning headmasters, an adoring populace - all stand in awe of his genius, however curmudgeonly he may conduct himself in private. And that genius is made all the more palpable by way of a magnificent central performance by Wolfgang Reichmann (whose Beethoven, warts and all, has the credibility Tom Hulce's Mozart lacked) and the juxtaposing of even the most outrageous behavior with music of unsurpassed sublimity.
Dietmar Prinz's Karl, by contrast, remains deliberately aloof, even cold and unfeeling toward the end. How, one wonders, could he so distance himself from the artistic grandeur unfolding around him? "Do you know how many musicians would love to be near such a man?" a family friend asks at one point. "And you are with him all the time and you don't even care." Perhaps Karl is not so dense after all when he replies, "Maybe that's the reason."