Song without end is the only existing movie about Liszt which was created with a biographic attempt. It is supposed to be a plot of Liszt's life between the 1830s and the 1860s. The conditions in which the movie was created explain why it was not a frank success. Originally meant to be directed by Charles Vidor, it was finally realized by George Cukor, after Vidor's death. When Cukor arrived on the stage where almost everything had already been set up, he had great difficulty to assign new directions starting from a project that lookes more like a carricature of Liszt than anything else. A lot of details were changed, but the final version remains far enough from reality. A lot of historical inaccuracies remain in the final version, the figure of Dirk Bogarde as the leading actor is questionable, mainly because his physical appearance has nothing in common with Liszt. Bogarde's acting is quite good though, especially for a non pianist actor. The other characters are for some a sucess (particularely the two leading women Marie d'Agoult and Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein), for some a carricature (George Sand, Richard Wagner).

The movie won an oscar for the best sound track, and it is really remarkable. In fact the choice of Jorge Bolet as pianist was visionnary for the time, for he was to become later one of the most famous Lisztians of the 80's. The movie is indeed a delicious summary of the pianistic art of Liszt, ranging from the Benediction de Dieu dans la Solitude to the Hungarian Rhapsodies. The outdoor scenes are sometimes accompained by orchestral pieces such as Mazeppa or the Mephisto Walz. In addition, the acting of Bogarde is very well filmed, and one coulc from time to time believe he is actually performing the pieces...

Review ( Synopsis from All-Movie Guide,  from B&N) :  Hoping to recapture the success of its 1945 Frederic Chopin biopic A Song to Remember, Columbia Pictures concocted the 1960 Technicolor costume drama Song Without End. Dirk Bogarde is cast as musical genius Franz Liszt. Bogarde's piano scenes are dubbed over by Jorge Bolet, but this hardly matters in that the film is preoccupied with Liszt's infamous romantic entanglements. The crux of the matter is Liszt's desire to wed the already married Russian princess Carolyne (Capucine),  which will necessitate an unpleasant breakup with his current lover, Countess Marie (Genevieve Page). This is the sort of  musical biography where everyone speaks Fluent Name-Dropping: "Hello there, Chopin," "How is your novel coming, Madame Sand?" and so forth. Director Charles Vidor died after only a few weeks on the picture; he was replaced by George  Cukor, who graciously insisted that Vidor be billed in letters larger than his. The chief selling point of Song Without End is its wall-to-wall music; the film won an Oscar for "best musical arrangement." Hal Erickson 

Liszt appears in other movies, some of them related to music, some others related to characters of the XIXth century. A very original example is the 1943 version of the Phantom of the Opera, with Claude Rains as the phantom. In fact, it is quite amusing to see that Liszt is unwillingly the cause of the transformation of Rains into the Phantom, helping to steal his music without knowing it. More than that, he is the key factor to catch the Phantom in the caves and catacombs of the Paris Opera, performing on the stage the stolen concerto of the Phantom, which is forced out of his silence by the music. Liszt in that movie is played by Leiber, which recreates the Abbe Liszt quite sucessfully...

Liszt is also present through his music in various cartoons, for example the Cat Concerto, with Tom and Jerry. This hilarious cartoon pictures the cat trying to play the second hungarian Rhapsodie on the piano, while the mouse is doing a lot of nonsense on the keyboard, the strings and the hammers...