It’s appropriate to kick off this series with the filmmaker whose movies I had a huge passion for during my early 20s especially. I had vaguely known the name of the English Ken Russell (born 1927) before the release of his “Altered States,” but it was only after seeing that film (twice in one week) during my junior year of high school that I first began to focus on him. A few months after seeing “Altered States” (a movie that truly “blew me away”) I found a book of essays about Russell’s films and that really clinched my interest. At the time, my family did not own a VCR (a situation that was rectified the next year), but little of Russell’s movies were available on home video anyway; a problem that remains even now in the DVD/Blu-Ray era. Fortunately, some of the local revival houses and increased availability of more obscure films on video came to the rescue and I was able to see many of Russell’s works (along with going to his recent movies.)
Russell’s prime as a moviemaker is the 15 year period from 1965 to 1980. He directed around 20 films in this period, both for British television and for the cinema. Considering what little respect he commands from most movie critics and enthusiasts (and the praise he does get is usually fairly condescending – his films being liked for their “campiness”), it’s always a shock for me to remember he actually got an Oscar nomination in the 1970 ceremony for directing the adapation of D.H. Lawrence’s “Women in Love,” a film that won Glenda Jackson the Academy Award that year for Best Actress. The early 1970s is Russell’s most powerful period in which, thanks to the Oscar clout and the brief media attention he received, he was able to attain large budgets which he used wisely to make a series of sensational films such as “The Music Lovers,” “The Devils,” “The Boy Friend,” “Savage Messiah,” “Mahler,” “Tommy” and “Lisztomania.”
Russell is most famous for his baroque approach to biographical films such as “The Music Lovers” (Tchaikovsky) and “Savage Messiah” (about the French sculptor Henri Gaudier who died in World War I at the age of 23.) I once wrote a lengthy essay entitled “Unreal Realities” about the various methods Russell used during that 15 year Golden Age, including expressionism and combining various art styles (music, art, drama, film etc.)
Now in his 80s Russell is still hard at work making films, although now he works independently, many of his newer works only shown online instead of theaters. What I’ve seen sadly lacks the thrilling brilliance of his best creations of the past, but Russell remains one of the great, albeit misunderstood, filmmakers of all time.
markrussyoung 