Nijinsky (film)

Nijinsky
Theater poster
Directed by	Herbert Ross
Produced by	Nora Kaye Stanley O'Toole Harry Saltzman
Written by	Hugh Wheeler Romola Nijinsky Vaslav Nijinsky
Starring	Alan Bates George De La Peña Leslie Browne Alan Badel Jeremy Irons
Cinematography	Douglas Slocombe
Edited by	William Reynolds
Production company	Hera Productions
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	March 20, 1980 (1980-03-20)
Running time	129 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$1,047,454

Nijinsky is a 1980 American biographical film directed by Herbert Ross. Hugh Wheeler wrote a screenplay that explores the later life and career of Vaslav Nijinsky; it was based largely on the premier danseur's personal diaries (a bowdlerized 1936 version was edited and published by his wife, Romola de Pulszky), and her 1934 biography of Nijinsky, largely ghostwritten by Lincoln Kirstein, who later co-founded the New York City Ballet.

The film suggests Nijinsky was driven into madness by both his consuming ambition and self-enforced heterosexuality. He became involved with Romola de Pulszky, a society girl who joined impresario Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes specifically to seduce Nijinsky. After a series of misunderstandings with Diaghilev, who is both his domineering mentor and possessive lover, Nijinsky succumbs to Romola's charms and marries her. After this, his gradual decline from artistic moodiness to a diagnosis of schizophrenia begins.

Reception to Nijinsky is mixed. It holds a 40% rating and an average score of 5.6/10 at Rotten Tomatoes.

In his review in Time, Richard Schickel opined, "Some people will be titillated by the openness with which homosexual love is portrayed in the film. But this is mostly a slow, cautious biography, elegantly attentive to Edwardian decor and dress. It slights Nijinsky's melodramatic story and, finally, offends with its relentless reductionism. There are times when excesses of good taste become a kind of bad taste, a falsification of a subject's spirit and milieu. This is never more true than when the troubles of a genius are presented in boring and conventional terms."