July 3, 1927– Ken Russell was a fierce filmmaker with an unusual sense of humor & a special talent to delight & provoke at the same time. His films had a mighty impact on me as a youth, with some of my first glimpses of male erotic encounters, along with his decidedly demented sensibility.
A pair of his films enthralled me as a young man & they had repeated viewings. The first was his screen version of D.H. Lawrence’s Women In Love (1969), Russell’s first real commercial success, with a fireside nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed & Alan Bates which jolted me right into gaydom. This scene apparently made the actors feel anxious, to say nothing of the audiences & censors. With a provocative screenplay by gay hero Larry Kramer, the film brought both Russell & Kramer Oscar nominations & made Russell a director not to be ignored.
The second film that had me all adither was The Music Lovers (1970), a swinging account of the gay composer Tchaikovsky‘s marriage & final days, which starred gay actor Richard Chamberlain in the lead role & brought his co-star Glenda Jackson notice by film fans.
“Wake ’em up” was Russell’s motto, & it is certainly true that you would probably not nod-off while watching a Russell film. If you did, you would have nightmares. Sex was the source of most of his themes, which always seemed fun coming from what should have been a buttoned-up Brit. His films were certainly not an example of English good taste, usually exemplified in the British films of his era by perfectly suppressed emotion & proper clipped upper-class accents. Russell’s films are considered impolite, even crude & deliberately shocking.
Russell had a thing for making films about the lives of classical composers, including: Edward Elgar, Frederick Delius, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gustav Mahler, & Franz Liszt. Song Of Summer (1968), about Delius, blind & syphilitic, attempting to complete his last works with the aid of his fellow composer Eric Fenby, is one of the very best films about being a creative artist that I have seen. Made for TV, it is hard to find, but I caught it on the Sundance Channel last year & I marveled.
English born Russell studied photography at art school. His youth was rather wild & not particularly discreet. He did drugs. He attempted a career as a ballet dancer & a photographer before getting a job at the BBC, where he made a series of educational musical films about the lives of composers. The success & notoriety of these films, gave Russell the power to make feature films. Many of his films are criticized for playing fast with the facts, but they make terrific psychological fantasies rather than straight-up film biographies.
I love the films of Ken Russell. Some of my favorite among his 60+ movies: the audacious The Devils (1971), which stars Vanessa Redgrave & features nuns masturbating to images of Christ on the cross, which I unfortunately saw on LSD & never recovered; The Boy Friend (1971), a musical based on Sandy Wilson‘s popular stage production & an homage to choreographer-director Busby Berkeley. This one is much debated by Musical Theatre purist, but I totally dig it; Savage Messiah (1972), about the tempestuous life of the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska; & Mahler (1974), a highly fictionalized biopic starring Robert Powell as the very neurotic composer.
I am also big on Tommy (1975), Russell’s witty & engaging version of The Who‘s rock opera; Valentino (1977), starring gay Rudolf Nureyev as the famous gay silent screen star; The psychedelic Altered States (1980), based on a novel & screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky who disowned his participation, Russell’s first Hollywood film; Crimes Of Passion (1984) an extremely erotic dream film starring Kathleen Turner as a prostitute named China Blue; & Gothic (1986) a nutty horror flick set in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, featuring the characters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, & Mary Shelley, about the eerie events which led to the writing of the novel Frankenstein.
Russell occasionally would work as an actor in film, including playing a gay British secret agent in The Russia House (1990), opposite Sean Connery & Michelle Pfeiffer.
Russell hated Hollywood, finding the biz to be corrupt & compromising. Hollywood did not love him back. He remains controversial & sometimes reviled. He was an artistic anarchist with formidable, flamboyant technique. All of the Russell’s films that I have experienced contain moments of sheer daring brilliance. He might have fared better with audiences & critics if he had made more traditional movies, but I am glad he didn’t. Russell’s final credits rolled in 2011. He was 82 years old when he left this world.
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