More Wagner and Freud than 'Sat. Night Live'?

Wonder if I'm the only one who revels in a different dimension of the film, its blend of Wagner and Freud, the sex-and-death romanticism, epitomized by Dennis Barlow's first tour of Whispering Glades when the camera shows the revolving statuary in the gardens and the background music soars with Wagner's Tristan, and the other scenes, the reflective ones, which also invoke Wagner on the soundtrack, or the tender scenes of Aimee when the film music turns dreamy as a child's playroom, or the scene where Sir Francis Hinsley takes his last look back at the studio, the nostalgia of a whole life written across his face, his toylike roadster parked across the street, and the music, once again, says it all. I wonder if I'm the only one who finds the passing satire, the "Sat. Night Live" stuff, a spice to be sure, a dollop of vinegar (save for the laxative spectacle of Mrs. Joyboy and her bulimia: eminently excisable footage, even if Leonard Maltin deems it the funniest in the movie) but far short of the element that REALLY plants the movie in the groin and keeps it there. The Terry Southern comedy that's piled on top of the original novel (the rocketry stuff, and above all Madame Refrigerator at the Joyboy residence) is understandable as fodder for the more belch-happy, barrel-of-laughs segment of the theatergoing public, but again I come back to my original question and ask how many of the movie's lovers, especially those old enough to have seen it "live" in the theaters in 1965, might indeed tickle themselves in passing -- in passing -- with the humor and satire (minus, as I said, the Madame Refrigerator bit), but are really moved more than anything by that opening petal-shrouded tour of Whispering Glades (the mood of which would never survive translation into color), and who would like to take lodgings there, clasp Miss Thanatogenous by the hand and move in with her, even mind-meld, pull up the rope ladder and live eternally in Aimee's Cosmetician's Parlor, the sounds of Tristan echoing in the air, no need for loudspeakers. How many out there see the film THAT way, I wonder? Just wonder.

Back to Tristan.