Ken Russell

He harboured a childhood ambition to be a ballet dancer but instead joined the Royal Air Force and the British Merchant Navy as a teenager. On one occasion he was made to stand watch in the blazing sun for hours on end while crossing the Pacific Ocean, as his mentally ill captain feared an attack by Japanese midget submarines despite the Pacific War having ended. He moved into television work after short careers in dance and photography.[10]

In 1954 Russell started work as a local-interest freelance photographer. His series of documentary 'Teddy Girl' photographs were published in Picture Post magazine in June 1955, and he continued to work as a freelance documentary photographer until 1959.[11]

During this time, he started directing short films: Peepshow (1956), Knights on Bikes (1956), and Lourdes (1959). He received a lot of acclaim for his short Amelia and the Angel (1959), which helped secure him a job at the BBC.

Between 1959 and 1970, Russell directed arts documentaries for Monitor and Omnibus.

He made Poet's London (1959, about John Betjeman), Portrait of a Goon (1959, about Spike Milligan), Gordon Jacob (1959), The Guitar Craze (1959), Variations on a Mechanical Theme (1959), Scottish Painters (1959), Marie Rambert Remembers (1960), The Strange World of Hieronymus Bosch (1960), The Miners' Picnic (1960), Architecture of Entertainment (1960), A House in Bayswater (1960), Shelagh Delaney's Salford (1960), Cranks at Work (1960, about John Cranko), The Light Fantastic (1960), Journey Into a Lost World (1960), Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (1961), Old Battersea House (1961), Portrait of a Soviet Composer (1961), London Moods (1961), Antonio Gaudi (1961), Preservation Man (1962), Mr. Chesher's Traction Engines (1962), The Lonely Shore (1962) and Watch the Birdie (1962).[12]

Russell's films began to get longer: Pop Goes the Easel (1962) and the much admired Elgar (1962) about Sir Edward Elgar. Elgar was the first time that a television arts programme (Monitor) was dedicated to one artistic figure, rather than having a magazine format. It was also the first time that re-enactments were used. Russell fought with the BBC over using actors to portray different ages of the same character, instead of the traditional photograph stills and documentary footage.[13]

Photograph of the film producer André de Toth, director Ken Russell, and actor Michael Caine in Helsinki during the cinematography of Billion Dollar Brain, here on Sofiankatu, near the old police station in 1967

Russell's first feature film was French Dressing (1964), a comedy loosely based on Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman; its critical and commercial failure led Russell to work further for the BBC. For television he made the 16-minute Lonely Shore (1964), the longer Bartok (1964) (about Béla Bartók), and The Dotty World of James Lloyd (1964). In 1964 he planned to make an adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1962) starring the Rolling Stones, but abandoned the film after the British Board of Censors advised it would not approve it.[14]

Russell had a noted critical success with the TV movie The Debussy Film (1965) starring Oliver Reed as Claude Debussy based on a script by Melvyn Bragg. Also well received was Always on Sunday (1965), written by Bragg, about Henri Rousseau.[15]

Russell made Don't Shoot the Composer (1966), a documentary about composer Georges Delerue. He did the highly praised Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World (1967), about Isadora Duncan with Vivian Pickles.[16]

Russell's television work prompted producer Harry Saltzman to hire him to direct a feature film, Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the third Harry Palmer movie starring Michael Caine. He wanted to follow it with a biopic of Vaslav Nijinsky but Brain was a commercial disappointment.[17]

He returned to television for Dante's Inferno (1967) with Reed as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Song of Summer (1968) about Frederick Delius and Eric Fenby. He once said that the best film he ever made was Song of Summer, and that he would not edit a single shot.[18]

In 1969, Russell directed what is considered his "signature film", Women In Love, an adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel of the same name about two artist sisters living in post-World War I Britain. The film starred Glenda Jackson, Oliver Reed, Jennie Linden and Alan Bates. The film is notable for its nude wrestling scene, which broke the convention at the time that a mainstream movie could not show male genitalia. Women in Love connected with the sexual revolution and bohemian politics of the late 1960s. It received four Oscar nominations, including his only nomination for Best Director.[6]

The film was BAFTA-nominated for the costume designs of Russell's first wife, Shirley; they collaborated throughout the 1970s. The colour schemes of Luciana Arrighi's art direction (also BAFTA-nominated) and Billy William's cinematography, which Russell used for metaphorical effect, are also often referred to by film textbooks.

Russell returned to television with Dance of the Seven Veils (1970) which sought to portray Richard Strauss as a Nazi: one scene in particular showed a Jewish man being tortured while a group of SS men look on in delight, with Strauss's music as the score. The Strauss family was so outraged by the film that they withdrew all music rights. The film was effectively banned from being screened until Strauss's copyright expired in 2019.[19] It was shown in February 2020 at the Keswick Film Festival.[20]

He followed Women in Love with a string of innovative adult-themed films which were often as controversial as they were successful. The Music Lovers (1971), a biopic of Tchaikovsky, starred Richard Chamberlain as a flamboyant Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Glenda Jackson as his wife. The score was conducted by André Previn.

He followed it with The Devils (1971), a film so provocative that the production company, Warner Bros., refused to release it, unless cuts were made.[21] Inspired by Aldous Huxley's book The Devils of Loudun and using material from John Whiting's play The Devils, it starred Oliver Reed as a priest who stands in the way of a corrupt church and state. Helped by publicity over the more sensational scenes, featuring sexuality among nuns, the film topped British box office receipts for eight weeks. In the United States, the film, which had already been cut for distribution in Britain, was further edited but never widely released theatrically in anything like its original state; the original, uncut version has only been shown in the U.S. at film festivals and art houses.[22] In 2017, AMC Networks-owned horror film streaming service Shudder premiered the uncut version of the film for the first time on streaming.[23]

British film critic Alexander Walker described the film as "monstrously indecent" in a television confrontation with Russell, leading the director to hit him with a rolled up copy of the Evening Standard, the newspaper for which Walker worked.[24] The uncut version of the film remains censored.

Russell followed The Devils with a reworking of the period musical The Boy Friend (1971), for which he cast the model Twiggy, who won two Golden Globe Awards for her performance: one for Best Actress in a musical comedy, and one for the best newcomer. The film was heavily cut and shorn of two musical numbers for its American release; it was not a big success.

Russell wanted to make Little Sparrow, a film about Édith Piaf, or a biopic of King Ludwig of Bavaria,[25] but neither was made. Instead, he himself provided most of the financing for Savage Messiah (1972). The film is a biopic of the painter and sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who died fighting for France at age 23, in 1915, in the trenches of the Western Front during the First World War. The film stars Dorothy Tutin, Scott Antony, and Helen Mirren.

Russell announced a biopic of Sarah Bernhardt with Barbra Streisand but it was not made.[26]

He worked with David Puttnam on Mahler (1974) starring Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler.

In 1975, Russell's star-studded film version of The Who's rock opera Tommy starring Roger Daltrey, Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton and Jack Nicholson, spent a record fourteen weeks at the No.1 spot.

Two months before Tommy was released (in March 1975), Russell started work on Lisztomania (1975), another vehicle for Roger Daltrey, and for the film scoring of progressive rock keyboardist Rick Wakeman.[1] In the film, the music of Franz Liszt is stolen by Richard Wagner. Wagner's operas then put forward the theme of the Superman. Tommy and Lisztomania were important in the rise of improved motion picture sound in the 1970s, as they were among the first films to be released with Dolby-encoded soundtracks. Lisztomania, tagged as "the film that out-Tommys 'Tommy'", topped the British box-office for two weeks in November 1975, when Tommy was still in the list of the week's top five box-office hits.

Russell's next film, the biopic Valentino (1977), starring Rudolf Nureyev as Rudolph Valentino, also topped the British box-office for two weeks, but was not a hit in America. After this he said "nobody in Hollywood would give me even a B movie to direct."[27]

Russell returned to television with William and Dorothy (1978) a look at the life of William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1978), about Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Russell went to Hollywood to make Altered States (1980), a departure in both genre and tone, in that it is Russell's only foray into science fiction. Working from Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay (based upon his novel), Russell used his penchant for elaborate visual effects to translate Chayefsky's hallucinatory story to the cinema, and took the opportunity to add his trademark religious and sexual imagery. The film had an innovative Oscar-nominated score by John Corigliano. The film enjoyed moderate financial success, and scored with critics who had otherwise dismissed Russell's work. Roger Ebert, who had given The Devils "zero stars", and had panned Russell's early composer portraits (he did, however, give three stars to both Tommy and Lisztomania), gave it his highest rating for Russell's work (three-and-a-half stars), praising it as "one hell of a movie!"

Although the film was a financial success, Russell had difficulty making his next film. One project, Beethoven's Secret, was about to start shooting when financing fell apart at the last minute. He was attached to do the film of Evita for over a year, but ultimately left the project when he refused to cast Elaine Paige in the lead. A biopic of Maria Callas with Sophia Loren also failed to get financing. However, Russell found himself artistically rejuvenated when offered the chance to direct some opera. He did The Rake's Progress, Soldiers and Butterfly.[28]

Russell's next film after Altered States was The Planets (1983), about Gustav Holst's orchestral suite of the same name. This 53-minute film was made specially for The South Bank Show, the weekly arts programme on the ITV network in Britain. It is a wordless collage that matches stock footage to each of the seven movements of the Holst suite. John Coulthart wrote "familiar Russell obsessions appear: Nazis, naked women and the inevitable crucifixion."[29] After essentially disappearing for decades, in 2016 the film was re-released on DVD by Arthaus Musik.[30]

For The South Bank Show, Russell also made Vaughan Williams: A Symphonic Portrait (1984) about Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Russell returned to feature films with a sexual thriller, Crimes of Passion (1984), starring Anthony Perkins and Kathleen Turner for New World Pictures. It had moderate critical success and did not perform well at the box office, but was a big hit on video.[31]

In the eighties, Russell directed a number of operatic productions. In 1985, he directed Gounod's opera Faust, loosely based on Goethe's play Faust.[32] The production was staged at the Vienna State Opera, conducted by Erich Binder with Francisco Araiza, Ruggero Raimondi and Gabriela Beňačková in the main roles. In 1986, he directed a production of Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, also based on Goethe's Faust: the production was staged at Teatro Margherita in Genoa, conducted by Edoardo Müller, with Ottavio Garaventa, Paata Burchuladze and Adriana Morelli in the main roles.[33] He also directed successful productions of La bohème and Madama Butterfly.

Russell set up a company, Sitting Duck, to make music videos. "Videos are a magic new art form," he said. Among those he made were "Nikita" for Elton John and "Phantom of the Opera" for Andrew Lloyd Webber.[31]

Russell had a legal fight with Bob Guccione over an aborted attempt to film Moll Flanders, which was dramatised in a movie, Your Honour, I Object! (1987).[34]

Russell directed Gothic (1986) with Gabriel Byrne, about the night Mary Shelley told the tale of Frankenstein. It was a hit on video for Vestron Pictures, who signed Russell to a three-picture contract.[35]

Russell did one of the segments for Aria (1987), and for British TV made Ken Russell's ABC of British Music (1988) and A British Picture (1989).

For the Vestron deal, he directed Salome's Last Dance (1988), a loosely adapted esoteric tribute to Oscar Wilde's controversial play Salome, which was banned on the 19th century London stage. The cult movie defines Russell's adult themed romance with the Theatre of The Poor and was also notable for the screen presence of Imogen Millais-Scott as Salome.

He made another two pictures for Vestron: The Lair of the White Worm (1988) with Amanda Donohoe and Hugh Grant, based on a novella by Bram Stoker, and The Rainbow (1989), another D. H. Lawrence adaptation, which also happens to be the prequel to Women in Love. Glenda Jackson played the mother of her character in the previous film.

Russell directed the opera Mefistofele (1989).