The director Steven Soderbergh and just about everyone associated with “Behind the Candelabra,” the new biographical film about Liberace, emphasized from the start that the movie was going to be about a love affair. A strange love affair, for sure — more a sordid co-dependency between Scott Thorson, a rootless young man, and Mr. Entertainment himself, Liberace, who was 40 years older.

The much-awaited film, starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Mr. Thorson, was shown on HBO on Sunday night (and continues its run on that channel and through HBO Go and HBO on Demand). As we were forewarned, not much attention is paid to Liberace the pianist or his attitude toward music. “I love giving people a good time,” Mr. Douglas’s Liberace explains to Mr. Damon’s Thorson soon after they meet. “That’s what I’m all about.”

There is an element of entertainment in all the performing arts. Liszt, at the height of his touring-virtuoso period, took the trappings of the superstar to another dimension. Beatlemania had nothing over the Lisztomania that swept Europe in the early 1840s.

But was there musical substance to Liberace’s showmanship, at least in its early years? I am no expert on the subject because even as a young piano student I thought his flamboyant television persona and frilly playing were absurd.