Ken Russell

[Dirty Boy]

Kinda inspired by the 'Tommy' thread over there...
Glancing at his imdb profile i realised i've hardly seen any of his movies.There's only The Devils i'm really familiar with.

He seems to always get slagged for being pretentious or whatever, but i've always liked what i've seen of his use of fucked up images and generally excessive directorial style.

Any ideas on what's worth seeing?.I don't mind if it makes no sense

[Peking O]

Alan Partridge references a Russell film, Women in Love, at some point in IAP I think. He talks about the wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. The film is based on a D.H. Lawrence book. It's pretty good, although most of Russell's stuff isn't. Russell got an Oscar nomination for it, and Glenda Jackson won one for her performance.

[Ghost of Troubled Joe]

The Devils is great, really really underrated film. Great direction, great script, and Olly Reed's at his best. Tommy is pure madness, but I've always found it watchable. Women in Love is also a great one. He's made some right shit though- Gothic (which I'd admit is a guilty pleasure), Lair of the White Worm, Altered States, Whore, and his TV adaptation of Lady Chatterly. A saw a clip of his last film (Fall Of The Louse Of Usher, or something equally daft), and it looked like a student film remake of Rocky Horror. When he's good, he's very good, when he's shit, he's very very shit.

[Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer]

Ken Russell's one of the (mainly) forgotten greats of the British film industry, but he's been ostracised because of films like The Devils. It's a crying shame he's not working in mainstream cinema anymore, because I think if he was, he'd be shooting bottle rockets up Richard Curtis' arse. Or he'd been drowned by the BBFC and the Daily Mail.

Altered States is an excellent late-night-dripping-into-early-morning-daze movie, and Lair of the White Worm is quite enjoyable, if only for Amanda Donahoe who I think bites off some guy's (possibly Hugh Grant's) cock.

I haven't seen all his movies, but his worst is his adap of Lady Chatterley, which is only watchable for the lovely Joely Richardson's bush, which pops up frequently.

Good fan site: http://www.iainfisher.com/russell.html

[Silver SurferGhost]

When he's good, he's very good, when he's shit, he's very very shit.

Nail on the Head there I think, and unfortunately from what I've seen he's been largely the latter since about 1990.

Apart from those already mentioned like The Devils and Tommy, I quite like his earlier erm, impressionistic biopics of composers and artists, like The Music Lovers (so long as you're prepared to witness Glenda Jackson writhing about in the nuddy in a train carriage for what seems forever - but it is integral to the plot, honest) and Mahler. An increasingly bizarre series of films that reached it's ridiculously logical conclusion with Lisztomania (made perhaps somewhat hastily off the back of Tommy, with Roger Daltrey as a rock-god Liszt, Ringo as the Pope, and Paul Nicholas as Wagner making a robot Rick Wakeman!), a film so bad it's, well, just appalling really.
Admirers of Helen Mirren in the nude thirty years ago might also like to seek out Savage Messiah, a reasonably straight (for Russell) reading of the life and career of the sculptor Henri Gaudier that also takes time for a swipe at art critics of all varieties.

Russell went right off the creative boil by the end of the 80's though, there was a South Bank show about him a couple years ago where he talked about not being able to get any funding for his latest film (which seemed to involve some topless nuns, again, but less artfully directed than usual). He seems to do quite a bit of acting these days as well, in all sorts of odd things.
If you ask me his last decent film is The Lair of the White Worm, a much-maligned and misunderstood comedy-horror gem, doing much the same with it's respective target as Lisztomania tried to but more successfully. However with his willful flying-in-the-face-of-the-critics, it's a direction Russell's since pushed way too far. The one time it worked was funny, a dozen variations on the same joke since aren't.

Maybe that'll sum up his career, he went so far and it was great, but then he just had to carry on pushing...

Of course, I couldn't do any of it myself. Criticism's easy, innit?
.

[Ambient Sheep]

Alan Partridge references a Russell film, Women in Love, at some point in IAP I think. He talks about the wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed.

"...naked as the day they were born..."  That's in TDT, isn't it?  Commentating a boxing match.

[Silver SurferGhost]

"Naked as God intended", innit...?

I may of course be wrong

[Narshty]

I'm a huge Ken Russell fan (I even taped his appearance on John Singleton's My Favourite Hymns the other Sunday), but it's just such a pity people see him as this crazy old weirdo obsessed with tits and gore. Along with other now-neglected British greats like Nicolas Roeg and Alan Clarke, his output as a whole has been some of the most radical and imaginative filmmaking ever to come out of this country.

The problem is, for all the outrageous trashiness of The Lair of the White Worm, Salome's Last Dance and Gothic (as Dirty Boy so aptly put it, "his use of fucked up images and generally excessive directorial style"), there's the remarkable low-key sensitivity of the likes of Women in Love, Savage Messiah or (for my money, his masterpiece)  Song of Summer, but people instantly think of the former when his name is brought up. I'm not saying his more delirious films like Altered States, Tommy or the riotous Lizstomania should be ignored (they're way too much fun to do that), but it's not remotely fair to judge him until you've seen the earlier stuff as well.

And even when the artistic merits of his films seem to be clinging on for dear life, there's still gallons of genuine imagination and originality on display, which is a fuck sight more than can be said for most of recycled, cannibalised shite that makes it out of our film industry.

Ken - love 'im. And his DVD commentaries are ace too.

[jutl]

Altered States was a Paddy Chayevsky screenplay which Chayevsky despaired of once Russell started warping it. I think it could have been a far greater film if Russell had been prepared to accept that it needed a light directorial touch to bring out the qualities of the story (as Sidney Lumet managed with Chayevsky's Network). Still, hiring Russell for his light directorial touch would always be a mistake.

I like his later works best, I think. Valentino and  Salome's Last Dance both managed to be distinctively Russell while not being self-consciously steeped in bad taste. They're also great movies. I have to admit that his earlier films often just bore me. Most of them seem to depend upon pushing the (then) boundaries of public taste, and that's a risky strategy. When public tastes become more liberal, the movies begin to look even more dated than the 'tasteful' efforts of the same period.

[Ambient Sheep]

"Naked as God intended", innit...?

I may of course be wrong

However you may of course be right.

It was rather late.

[Purple Tentacle]

"Naked as God intended", innit...?
I may of course be wrong

However you may of course be right.
It was rather late.

Wrong, all of you.......


Naked as the day they were born, fighting the way god intended.

[Almost Yearly]

I actually enjoyed Altered States a lot, although you have to gloss over the gorilla suit. William Hurt fan, me. If you tell me the screenplay - or book or whatever - was better, well that applies to 99% of films dunnit.

[jutl]

I actually enjoyed Altered States a lot, although you have to gloss over the gorilla suit. William Hurt fan, me. If you tell me the screenplay - or book or whatever - was better, well that applies to 99% of films dunnit.

I think it's more a matter of a fantasy satire (in the same vein as Network) being turned into slightly eggy sci-fi with no satirical edge at all. I'm not against Altered States, and if we could have both versions, I'd be very happy. If we have to have just one though, I'd have preferred Russell's one to have remained unmade.

[Hornet]

I too am a huge admirer of Lair of the White Worm, another Amanda Donohue movie where the costume department had an easy life where she was concerned.

I do recall also as a teenager seeing Tommy 3 times in a week.  Not sure I could manage watching it these days though.

[alan strang]

His contribution to the film 'Aria' (Nessun Dorma) always gives me goose-bumps. Although I could probably have done without the shots of Linzi Drew's knockers.

Russell did an earlier South Bank Show (to the one mentioned above) which was a basic career overview. It was fantastic.

[Purple Tentacle]

"Some say I resemble my mother, dear Jane.... I suppose it must be my....baby blue eyes!!!"

(Jumps up and down with bouncing tits.)

[Ambient Sheep]

Naked as the day they were born, fighting the way god intended.

So my original quote was completely correct as far as it went, then?  ;-)

Congratulations on either having a good memory or being arsed to go and put the DVD on and find it.  :-)

[Silver SurferGhost]

Wrong, all of you......

Nah, I'd like to think we were all right, just in different ways and with some of the words in a different order, and missing a few of them here and there.

His contribution to the film 'Aria' (Nessun Dorma) always gives me goose-bumps.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that one. Knockers optional as you say.

Russell did an earlier South Bank Show (to the one mentioned above) which was a basic career overview. It was fantastic.

You're absolutely right, and in the interests of balance I should have mentioned it, but I probably thought I'd gone on long enough as it was...
.