Synopsis:

Based on Eric Fenby's 1936 memoir Delius As I Knew Him, and co-scripted by Russell with Fenby himself, it recounts the last six years of the composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934), who by 1928 was blind and paralysed from tertiary syphilis and unable to compose. The paradox that lies at the heart of Russell's film is the marriage of Delius' remarkable art and his hardness as a character, most evident in his callous treatment of his wife. We see a difficult old monster of egotism, tyrannising all around him, whilst time and again his music, tender and rhapsodic, swells on the soundtrack. It is also the moving story of the young composer Eric Fenby and how he volunteered to help the ailing composer set down the unfinished scores he could hear in his head - ultimately sacrificing his life and his future for an ideal and a talent he thought greater than his own.