Ken Russell (1927-2011)

[MichaelB]

Ken Russell.

[John Edmond]

RIP Russell. Glad he knew The Devils was finally getting a decent release, but that seems trivial.

[DiVicenzo]

Well, Ken Russell will never see his masterpiece released, even though he knew it was going to be. So Sad. I am very sad.

[eltopo]

RIP

[MichaelB]

If BBC4 is looking for money-saving ideas that absolutely no-one would complain about, they could easily mount a Ken Russell BBC retrospective.

His small-screen output from 1959-70 is one of the most extraordinary bodies of work of any creative artist in the last century, and it's still scandalously little-seen - as demonstrated by the fact that my own research tends to get quoted whenever anything's revived!

[SternDiet]

Very sad indeed. I'll open a bottle of Moet & Chandon and put in one of his movies tonight.

[colinr0380]

Very sad news, especially with The Devils finally getting a release, but at least he was able to know that there would be a release of it to come.

I definitely agree about a BBC retrospective being essential! It seems problematic that many of Russell's films from this period, along with those from the end period of his career (i.e. post Whore, even if these later films are not as celebrated), should be difficult to see. Presumably both of these periods would help to place the more well known and theatrically released films into better context.

[MichaelB]

The sad truth is that the post-1990 stuff is generally pretty terrible (personally, I think you need to make fairly huge allowances for everything after Crimes of Passion in 1984) - but the pre-1970 TV films are often absolutely dazzling, and even the comparatively minor work, such as the very early Monitor fillers, usually have several memorable moments.

[antnield]

Re: the BBC films, there's the excellent Region 1 set Ken Russell at the BBC, containing some of his very finest work: Elgar, The Debussy Film, Always on Sunday, Isadora: The Biggest Dancer in the World, Song of Summer and Dante's Inferno.

Re: the post-Crimes of Passion films, I do have a fondness for his Elgar 'sequel' made for The South Bank Show in 2002. And his Sean Bean-starring Lady Chatterley adaptation - which probably had the best critical reception of anything from the nineties onwards - is still easy to see.

[MichaelB]

Re: the BBC films, there's the excellent Region 1 set Ken Russell at the BBC, containing some of his very finest work: Elgar, The Debussy Film, Always on Sunday, Isadora: The Biggest Dancer in the World, Song of Summer and Dante's Inferno.

A mere fraction of the total, though - he made 33 films for the BBC between 1959 and 1970, 32 of which definitely still survive (because I've been lucky enough to see them), and I can think of several that are easily up to the standard of anything in that box.

The real scandal is that none of these films is currently available in Russell's native country - the BFI's Elgar and Song of Summer are long OOP, for reasons completely beyond their control.

Anyway, I've been assured by a BBC insider that they'll definitely be doing something in tribute, though quite what remains to be seen.

[Forrest Taft]

The sad truth is that the post-1990 stuff is generally pretty terrible (personally, I think you need to make fairly huge allowances for everything after Crimes of Passion in 1984) - but the pre-1970 TV films are often absolutely dazzling, and even the comparatively minor work, such as the very early Monitor fillers, usually have several memorable moments.

I thought his segment in Trapped Ashes, "The Girl With Golden Breasts", was a pretty amusing satire. Certainly a minor work, but far from terrible. I need to see more of his early work, though, and I'm eagerly looking forward to The Devils...

[nolanoe]

Just saw this on imdb.

Utterly sad, really. It's good to know though that he was aware of the positive reaction of the remaster being announced.

Strange coincidence, I just had put on Drive by REM... so sad, really...

[colinr0380]

Re: the late 80s work - I think Hugh Grant (and Amanda Donohoe, and arguably Peter Capaldi!) has never been better than in the highly amusing Lair of the White Worm, and some of the hallucination sequences in there rival anything in Altered States; his Egyptian dream/car crash sequence to the tune of Nessun Dorma from Aria is probably the best section of that work; and Theresa Russell is fantastic in Whore (apparently Russell's answer to all of the questions sidestepped by Pretty Woman!)

EDIT: Plus Gothic is absolutely amazing as a non-composer biopic which puts some of the more calculated excesses in Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to shame, and gets deeper inside the themes of the story to boot!

[MichaelB]

I completely agree that Lair of the White Worm is an absolute hoot, but if I was ranking all of Ken Russell's output in order of artistic merit I'd have to place it rather low.

[colinr0380]

Well, if you want 'artistic merit' you have The Rainbow, Prisoner of Honor and, as antnield says, the Lady Chatterley series.

(I'm also probably one of the only fans of Salome's Last Dance, occasionally double-billing it with Peter Greenaway's Baby of Macon!)

Here's that amazing sequence from Aria

[MichaelB]

Well, if you want 'artistic merit' you have The Rainbow, Prisoner of Honor and, as antnield says, the Lady Chatterley series.

Pale shadows of his earlier work. In fact, The Rainbow is one of the few Russell films that's downright dull and conventional.

The tragedy of that film was that it was a bit for "respectability" after the excesses of Gothic, Salome's Last Dance and Lair of the White Worm, and the pre-publicity suggested that it was the film that Russell really wanted to make, and that he'd agreed to make the last two (especially Lair) in exchange for being allowed to adapt The Rainbow. Which is one of the reasons why it was such a crushing disappointment.

I never saw Whore, but I was never under the impression that I'd missed much.

But the vast majority of his output from 1958 to 1984 ranks amongst the greatest creative achievement of any British filmmaker, and he's in the first rank of television auteurs from anywhere.

[knives]

Literal beating of dead horses now?[/jk] This is very unfortunate now with him regaining popularity or whatever you want to call it with The Devils release coming up. I just guess retirony has invaded to real world.

[MichaelB]

Ken Russell's filmography, from Knights on Bikes (1956) to Celebrity Big Brother (2007) - compiled by hand by yours truly, and it damn near killed me.

There's one annoying omission, in that I was never able to establish precisely when he attacked Alexander Walker with a rolled-up copy of the Evening Standard - I know it was on a live BBC news programme in 1971, but the level of research needed to work out the exact date would have taken more time than I had to spare.

[colinr0380]

I never saw Whore, but I was never under the impression that I'd missed much.

I thought that was a very impressive film, with an interesting mix of utter irreverence (some of the fetish set pieces, the client having a heart attack during coitus and the both amusing and jawdropping in its bad taste, "I want to bang her" title song) and rather more upsetting scenes of Liz's loss of innocence (the various scenes with the pimp and the gang rape scene in the van), which felt as it it captured well the precarious sense that events could easily tip in either direction at any moment.

Using the conceit of Liz talking to the camera and relating some of her life stories (giving the film an episodic feel interlinked with the narrative of Liz in the present trying to escape from the pimp), it builds into a uniquely philosophical meditation on attitudes to sex with Liz alternately expressing amusement at the utter ludicrousness of her sex obsessed clients (and the brief power she is able to have over them, which often backfires) and a wistful sadness at having lost something by giving herself over to this line of work - the monologue where she talks of wanting sex to be more than just an act, having once enjoyed it for its own sake, while cleaning herself up in a bathroom toilet, sitting on the sink and reflected in the mirror; and the brief sequence of a possible liberation from her life by a woman who introduces her to literature and possibly lesbianism - both heartbreaking for the way they show a yearning for some other way of life that is quickly and brutally cut short.

I really think this is one of Theresa Russell's best performances, certainly worthy of being mentioned along with Bad Timing, and Whore also makes a nice companion piece to the film Russell had made just before, in which she played a cop going undercover as a prostitute, Impulse.

[ellipsis7]

Very sad - remember the early/mid 70's when one virtuoso Russell film was followed by another must-see in rapid succession...

The January ish of Sight and Sound - arrived on the shelves in Dublin today, although it is still November - reviews 3 new Russell DVs (THE MUSIC LOVERS, THE BOY FRIEND & SAVAGE MESSIAH) but ends with this prescient comment...

Of course one significant title from this period remains resolutely unavailable - THE DEVILS, arguably his finest feature film, and recently reconstituted with its 'Rape of Christ' sequence intact. Message to Warners Brothers - "It's not all, folks"

The BFI, through their Video Publishing arm, are completing the coda...

[MichaelB]

There's a distinct possibility that the author of that review was fully aware that the BFI was preparing an edition of The Devils (I myself knew well in advance of the print deadline for that particular issue), couldn't go public just yet but decided to flag up the film's non-availability anyway.

Which is probably what I'd have done in similar circumstances.

[Mr Pixies]

I really think this is one of Theresa Russell's best performances, certainly worthy of being mentioned along with Bad Timing, and Whore also makes a nice companion piece to the film Russell had made just before, in which she played a cop going undercover as a prostitute, Impulse.

whoa, i was just going to say i really want to see Whore, and it's on youtube so i'll watch it tonight. Crimes of Passion is great to me, and so is a lot of the Ken Rssell movies, so, bye.

[MoonlitKnight]

I remember reading an article Roger Ebert wrote about an interview he did with him back in the mid- to late- '80s. It was one of the hardest times I've ever laughed.

[MichaelB]

Now this was a really unexpected surprise - a leading article in The Guardian (and a proper leader, on the main editorial page in the print edition), calling on the BBC to make Russell's television work available again.

I've been banging this particular drum for several years now, so it's thrilling to see it taken up by the one national newspaper most closely associated with the values of the BBC. I don't imagine every single employee is an avid Guardian reader, as the stereotype has it, but this will certainly get noticed by people with the power to do something about it.

[j99]

Your Honour, I Object! (Channel 4, tx. 27/11/1987), about his legal battle over an aborted film of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders

I seem to remember BBC's Arena also covering this legal dispute with Bob Guccione.