Ken Russell (1927-2011)

[Jonathan S]

Thanks - looks like I have a rare uncut copy then! I think it's actually more like 20 years ago since I recorded that complete broadcast of Song of Summer. Ironic that even one of Russell's least controversial works should come to be known in a cut print...

[Cold Bishop]

Just a reminder that the uncut widescreen The Boy Friend is available here in the states. Of course, getting the Warner Archives discs overseas is a problem in itself, but its out there.

[GaryC]

Well, The Boy Friend wasn't even shown in 16:9, let alone 2.35:1, but in a panned and scanned 4:3 transfer that made nonsense of the compositions! I erased it without watching.

I was cursing myself as I'd forgotten to record it, and it isn't available on Iplayer. Just as well then - thanks.

[neilist]

Well, The Boy Friend wasn't even shown in 16:9, let alone 2.35:1, but in a panned and scanned 4:3 transfer that made nonsense of the compositions! I erased it without watchings.

I watched 'Elgar' last night on the iPlayer and it was a 4:3 image broadcast in 16:9! It was easily solved by switching my TV to 4:3, but that compressed up the BBC logo in the corner and while I usually find I can ignore channel logs easily enough, having the familiar BBC logo rendered out of proportion on screen was somewhat more a distraction.

[DiVicenzo]

Thanks - looks like I have a rare uncut copy then! I think it's actually more like 20 years ago since I recorded that complete broadcast of Song of Summer. Ironic that even one of Russell's least controversial works should come to be known in a cut print...

Thanks for pointing this out Jonathan - luckily I had taped it from the telly too and just checked the tape and the Laurel & Hardy sequence is there. I do have the BFI and US box-set too but either haven't watched them for ages or haven't noticed that piece missing. As soon as you described it I knew I had seen it before. So, thanks again for pointing this out.

Just a reminder that the uncut widescreen The Boy Friend is available here in the states. Of course, getting the Warner Archives discs overseas is a problem in itself, but its out there.

I got a friend in the States to buy 'The Boy Friend' and 'Savage Messiah' from Warner Archives on my behalf because they will only ship to US addresses. Silly billies - they are losing out on a few dollars there.

Ken Russell funeral banned by the BBFC.

This made me think of... Monty Python: Ken Russell's Gardening Club (1958)

I watched The Music Lovers - made the year before The Devils - last night and I fucking loved it. There were some great, energetic tracking shots in it; the editing was crazy and helped build the hysteria; and Richard Chamberlain was perfect. The 1812 Overture sequence was wonderful. Pure Russell and I loved it.

I couldn't agree more Jean Luc - the 1812; the duel; the train carriage scene; the asylum scenes (always moves me); the montage at the end resulting in Tchaikovsky scalding and that fabulous image of Nina looking through the bars right the end not to mention the opening sequence and the Piano Concerto sequences are all Russellian to the utmost!

I also love the editing in the Swan Lake sequence where the Count arrives....and the scene where Piotr has been rejected by Madame von Meck and he runs through the blazing field....so much to love in this film....

I suspect his actual funeral will indeed be pretty spectacular (he wants a full Viking one, apparently), but the Daily Mash is in fact the British equivalent of The Onion, and is to be taken just as seriously.

I think it was pretty low-key in comparison to what he would have envisaged and here is what Humphrey Burton read out:

A very moving and apt tribute read by Humphrey Burton at Ken's funeral. A couple of mistakes like 'Sons & Lovers' and 'Diva' but hey!!

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.

I don't know if you are involved in this campaign on Facebook Michael....Paul has made some spiffing posters for the campaign....

.....and here's a very touching sequence: KR & lovely Nipper (the Incredible) enjoying music.

[MichaelB]

Humphrey Burton's eulogy, delivered at Russell's funeral.

(Burton and Russell were regular colleagues and close friends throughout pretty much the entirety of Russell's filmmaking career).

[MichaelB]

Well, here's a wholly unexpected and very welcome surprise - Network is bringing out what appears to be Ken Russell's entire South Bank Show output (1983-2002) in a single box, at least going from the blurb and the 510-minute running time.

More details in the dedicated Network thread.

They don't quite scale the creative heights of his Monitor and Omnibus work for the BBC (1959-70), but I'd buy it for the bonkers ABC of British Music alone. And I remember his idiosyncratic interpretation of Holst's 'The Planets' being quite something, though I haven't seen it in nearly thirty years.

[broadwayrock]

BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme had a segment of Ken Russell last week.

Kim Newman reviews a new cut of The Devils, and from behind the piano Neil Brand deconstructs Russell's use of music in his films from Gustav Mahler to The Who.

The podcast of the show can be downloaded here

[Dylan]

I was on The Classic Horror Film Board this morning and came across two postings about a test screening of Altered States. Somewhere on this forum I've referred to an amazing Cinefastique article that describes and offers screengrabs from a great deal of hallucination sequences that were excised, but from this it sounds like there was even more footage that didn't make it into the film.

Did anyone see the audience test screening of ALTERED STATES in San Diego, California in late 1979 or early 1980? It was in the Mission Valley Mall or the Fashion Valley Mall area, either Cinema 21 or the Valley Circle Theater, can't remember which. It was like three hours long, had no music score, was missing some sound effects, but there were entire dialog scenes, extensions of scenes, comings and goings, tons of nudity and savagery, some longer s/f sequences involving religious symbolism and some really offensive footage involving a crucifix that didn't make it into the final cut several months later. We drove down to San Diego specifically to see it; nothing could keep me away from a new film by the director of The Devils. Ken Russell was said to be in attendance, although we did not see him, we did see Blair Brown's agent pacing in front of the office turning colors and fanning himself saying to another suit "you promised me! you promised me!" We filled out cards and handed them in after the film.

and

The love scenes were explicit, graphic, almost gynecological in detail, with orgasmic screams from Blair Brown that provoked some chuckling. The actress William Hurt has the affair with also did very intense stuff. Hurt's regression into a primtive man was longer. I remember after this howling sex scene Blair and Hurt have a long-winded intellectual debate using five-syllable technical jargon while standing in front of each other full-frontal nude. Long takes in which they forget themselves and then after Hurt loses the debate he becomes conscious of their nudity. Then they start in again. The point being that their science and intellectual connection is as intimate and passionate as their lovemaking, I guess, but that human beings are still animals. That was actually a very powerful scene and I wish it had been left in. It was like a metaphor for the entire film.

I've always liked this film, and all of this sounds great. MichaelB, or anybody else - do you know if any of this additional footage from Altered States still exists? Have you or anybody you know been able to view it since the test screening (or at the test screening)?

[MichaelB]

I've no idea. It would be Warner Bros' property if it still exists.

[Matt]

I'm watching Lair of the White Worm via TCM's on-demand service. When I first watched it on video in the early '90s (back-to-back with Gothic), I thought it was awful. I had only seen The Devils and maybe parts of Altered States, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought the video effects were embarrassingly cheesy. Now that I watch it in 2024, the video effects are still cheesy, but they are so effective at creating an overheated, terrifying dream world. I thought the same about a recent rewatch of Altered States (which seems a little more understated and compromised due to its big studio origins). I don't think Russell is terribly fashionable now (with the exception of the continued reverence for and fetishization of The Devils--I think it it were more widely available, people might calm down a little about it), but he had such a singular point of view and style.

I ought to finally break down and get those BBC collections.

[TechnicolorAcid]

As an avid Russell defender, Lair of the White Worm is most definitely an oddity as a rather straightforward horror flick savored with those otherworldly effects that Matt mentioned in the maverick of British cinema’s overview but I love it all the same, if only for the touches of cheeky humor that consistently appears throughout the film (“I’m having me dinner” gag always stands as one of the funniest lines in a Russell film if not only because of Ken’s delivery). Plus I generally appreciate because it all but ensured that Russell could have the finances to release his final masterpiece (at least until I see Whore) in Salome’s Last Dance, which in that context makes Lair a surprisingly more adequate film considering Russell could’ve easily just phoned it in for that blank check. Though Gothic is still the better of Russell 80s horror.

[beamish14]

As an avid Russell defender, Lair of the White Worm is most definitely an oddity as a rather straightforward horror flick savored with those otherworldly effects that Matt mentioned in the maverick of British cinema’s overview but I love it all the same, if only for the touches of cheeky humor that consistently appears throughout the film (“I’m having me dinner” gag always stands as one of the funniest lines in a Russell film if not only because of Ken’s delivery). Plus I generally appreciate because it all but ensured that Russell could have the finances to release his final masterpiece (at least until I see Whore) in Salome’s Last Dance, which in that context makes Lair a surprisingly more adequate film considering Russell could’ve easily just phoned it in for that blank check. Though Gothic is still the better of Russell 80s horror.

I’m firmly in the camp of Whore being a late-career triumph, if just for the first 20 minutes or so alone. Even the credits, which recede back into a tunnel like a depraved karaoke video, never fail to make me smile

[MichaelB]

I interviewed Sammi Davis about Lair of the White Worm a few years ago, and she confirmed longstanding suspicions that she, Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi knew exactly what kind of film they were making right from the start.

[TechnicolorAcid]

This seems like the best place here to place my writing on Tommy.Show

The first moment of Tommy begins on a blue screen announcing in typical 60s typography 'A Film by Ken Russell... Tommy by "The Who"' backed a low pitched droning going on in the background, you begin to set yourself in and BAM an orange drenched background with a man coated in silhouette staring at the sun. It's a powerful image, in part because it's so unexpected and that sets the course that defines the absolute grip on you that Ken Russell's magnum opus Tommy has. And to start my review I will admit that the visual power of Tommy is arguably it's biggest strength, the film drips with imagery that's so instantly memorable and even surreal that at points, the closest possible comparison one could make is what if Kenneth Anger was given enough money to do a film on one of the defining rock albums of the past decade. It's a nonstop visual feast that uses every technique that Russell learned and then piles on more afterwards with every frame being something that you'd what to place onto your wall like your Sally Simpson. And in context to the rest of Russell's filmography allows Russell to fully showcase the anarchy underneath the guise of normal Britain.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Russell is, at his core, a filmmaker obsessed with twisting the history and cultural aspects of society into something, not necessarily uncanny, but distinct enough that no person would even mistake it for the kitchen sink dramas being made at the time (I guess you could say Russell's works had everything but the kitchen sink). And while Russell's fixations in his films were more centered on classical music, dance, and art; Tommy is Russell's distortion of cinema. A key point mentioned in Russell's life was in how he used to project old silent movies set to the soundtrack of old classical records that he bought and Tommy has that same sense of just playing a silent movie set to the record player, helped by the fact that both Russell's story and Tommy itself use the sounds of the bombing going on across England in WWII as a soundscape to heighten certain moments. But besides the fact that Tommy is basically a silent film, it's also filled with Hollywood iconography from the Marilyn Monroe cult in Eyesight to the Blind to the presence of Hollywood stars Ann-Margret and Jack Nicholson all of which is then contorted into a newer, freer creation (even ignoring Ann-Margret's "bath" scene, Nicholson and Oliver Reed were both given their first singing roles to actually be shown to the general public). Not to mention how the typical themes of Golden Age Hollywood cinema continually appear but become so outwardly outlandish that it turns into a into a mixed-up combination of what I can only describe as a Douglas Sirk musical on acid with the style of textbook camp, all wrapped a rather conventional rise and fall narrative, for which Tommy definitely takes inspiration from stylistically (the usage of shadows is a prime example).

And all along our tour is the actual Tommy who is the representation of the movies themselves, who we constantly get into his mind as though he is the projector of the film, forming images and creating sounds beyond reality itself (take the moment where all 3 differently colored Tommies come together to form a complete color image as a standout moment of this). His constant glaring into the mirror serving as a reflection of our own willingness to retreat into a world that isn't our own, an opportunity for escapism that the movies offer so very well for so many of us. And as the story progresses Tommy himself turns into a statement on how greed has killed the imagination of the movies and from the moment Tommy is freed, it makes sense that one of the few moments of genuine imagination comes from Sally Simpson, representative of the young people inspired by the films they grow up with and yearning for the big leagues with Tommy, only to be literally kicked down for her wishes much as many of the experimental or indie artists back then were shunned or denied a chance at true fame.

Tommy is at first altruistic with his motives (much as the film censors up until the 1960s presented themselves as the moral high-ground), but possibly as a result of the negative influence of his parents, his mission develops into one of pure profit and more & more he starts giving out demands, forcing people to abide by his rules, expanding his reach much as the censors themselves laid out tons of restrictions on the studios in hopes of keeping authority. But slowly it builds up, culminating in We're Not Gonna Take It which ultimately destroys the symbol representing the foundations of the Code through killing Uncle Frank and Mrs. Walker with the knowledge that the people protesting Tommy have finally created change and are free to run with their wildest imaginations. And after the solemn mourning of the old system, Tommy runs and he runs until he returns to where it all started with, singing to the audience about the excitement that someone gives and how they've inspired millions with its glory, it's opinions and it's story. And who is Tommy talking about? Perhaps it's about Tommy itself and the ending song is a thank you to the audience for sticking to the end but I prefer to read it, in the context of the last 2 paragraphs, as a thank you to cinema itself, for the stories it provides us and how it will inspire new generations again and again, which was most definitely at this point a nod to the new system of the entertainment industry itself which was now far riskier and daring (which funnily enough is represented by Tommy's rigous climb up the mountain) and by going back to where it all began, it shows that the cinema has returned to a place of joyous release of ideas and imagination as the sun begins to set on the era of the previous generations.

Now how much of that was actually intended is certainly up for debate but if anything is clear, Tommy is peak counterculture, through both it's music taken directly from one of the biggest counterculture bands of its time in The Who that reaps of psychedelics especially in The Acid Queen and Sparks and it's rebellious, high-energy attitude both against the corruptive influence of authority and the nature of storytelling itself. I've heard a lot of people describe Tommy as so-bad-it's-good but while it's certainly it's odd choices are great for a fun night with your friends, Tommy is barely played straight, barring the occasional moment of genuine seriousness that Russell is allowed to extract (mainly in the first half).

And bouncing off that point, despite me spending most of the discussion on how Tommy represents a new freedom in the cinema, it's still very scathing to the counterculture movement, remember it had been dead for a couple years after Tommy came out so in a new context, it becomes a satire of the movement's rise and self-destruction represented by people just wanting to profit off a rising trend and the general realization from it's followers that the promises of the movement have given way to anything but peace. I'm Free being a standout mockery of the ideas of the movement as our titular lead begins shouting out his rhetoric much to the apathy or downright confusion of basically anyone observing him as he begins to condemn their ignorance of his gospel which in someway does conjure come comparisons to the initial treatment of the movement while Eyesight to the Blind ends up being morphed into a song about false promises with many of the same people in that song's crowd popping later on in the film still ailing and afflicted. And there's also similarly psychotic bits of potential help leading Tommy down a darker path of society rather than actually helping him from Tina Turner's drug-fueled Acid Queen to Keith Moon's pedophillic Uncle Ernie and Paul Nicholas' deranged Cousin Kevin. All to say that Tommy is at heart, a condemnation of the harm that can be caused by even the most noble of intentions helped by the fact that it's a running theme in a lot Russell's work from The Devils down to his poor taste A Kitten for Hitler. Although in Tommy's case, it's certainly more cheery than The Devils.

But at the same time as all of this, maybe Tommy doesn't have any deeper meaning and Russell's film references were just an excuse to finally pay homage to Brief Encounter. Perhaps the beauty of Tommy is that it's a film that exists outside of conventional narrative or thinking, one where Elton John dons 5 foot tall boots (at this moment I realize I forgot to mention the Pinball Wizard number) and where the vision of a child's dead father is placed on an airplane as though he's being crucified before his head becomes replaced by a pinball. I don't know if I'll ever truly understand why I love Tommy so much (no reason to deny that this is really a three star movie at heart) but it's a damn fun time nonetheless and definitely serves as the peak of Russell's artistry. To end this critique I'd like to cap off by saying God bless you Ken Russell, you magnificent bastard.