Too often, people's concept of motion pictures involves heated discussions over totally disposable information such as which movie will be, fleetingly, #1 at the box-office. You know what? Who cares! Let us never forget that cinema, however entertaining, is an art form. And like any art form, it has its Masters.
The world has just lost an undisputed Master of Cinema, English director Ken Russell. He was born in Southampton, England in 1927 and died Sunday in his sleep in the port town of Lymington, at the age of 84. You've never met such a character! Or, if you have, you'll never forget him. I have, last year at L.A.'s Academy Theatre, and under the auspices of the American Cinematheque, at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre, and Santa Monica's Aero Theatre. A whole bunch of us got together and celebrated some of the astounding works of the visionary Mr. Russell: Tommy! The Devils! Women in Love! The Music Lovers! Lisztomania! Gothic! Altered States, even!
Truly, it's hard to believe -- in our current, corporate, cookie-cutter age of cinema -- that one man was responsible for so many outrageous and outstanding motion-picture experiences. Key word: Experiences! For when "Unkle Ken" (as he was known to his latter-day Facebook friends) went to work, the results were usually life-altering. Come on: Oliver Reed, Ann-Margret and Tina Turner belting the songs of Pete Townshend and The Who along with Roger Daltrey in Tommy? Transcendent! It's sitting right here on my shelf as I type this, and I watch it about twice a year, and it reminds me that cinema (note: even Western, commercial cinema) can be, literally, "a sensation." Or Gothic? Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley spending the night together in a Swiss villa with funky-strange music by Thomas Dolby? Find me a cooler movie from the '80s. Dare ya.
And then let us go back, back to the films that followed Mr. Russell's BBC documentaries on classical composers, which gradually made the man a legend. His docs for the Beeb (from '59-'70, on Debussy, Delius, Strauss, etc.) crystalized his vision, and meanwhile he broke out into features, first with the lesser French Dressing (1963), and then the bizarre and kind of wonderful Cold War spy flick, Billion Dollar Brain, with Michael Caine and Karl Malden (1967).
Then came the Earth-shaking stuff. Nowadays it's de rigueur for film journalists (or any journalists) to cite the nude male wrestling sequence in Russell's adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love (1969), but upon release it raised plenty of eyebrows, and scored Russell a Best Director nomination on American shores. Even today, the between-the-wars drama can make you go, "Whoah." Hot on the heels of that success, he delivered one of his finest films, The Music Lovers (1970), featuring a stunning performance by Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky, a film which also reunited Russell with one of his grandest leading ladies, Glenda Jackson.
In Mr. Russell's astonishing career, however, 1971 is the hot button: the year The Devils, his adaptation of Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, was released. A seething, shattering study of religious hypocrisy and political manipulation (by way of heresy, torture, human sacrifice and nun-orgies), The Devils is one of Russell's most impressive, if also most disturbing, cinematic statements. (Hard to believe we watched it onscreen with him only last year.) Coming out of Hammer classics as he did (The Curse of the Werewolf), Oliver Reed's gift for -- what shall we call it, "violent pathos"? -- will be indelibly printed (or perhaps charred) upon your brain, after watching this film. Banned in countries all over the world and released heavily edited where it was released at all, Russell's The Devils will finally see DVD release this March in its 111-minute U.K. cut.
My faves, though? Well, as spookhouse silly as it can be, I adore Russell's Gothic (1986) and Lair of the White Worm (1988). My goodness, in the latter (Russell's loose adaptation of a book by Dracula's Bram Stoker), watching Amadna Donohoe (as a swanky vampire priestess) putting the damage on Hugh Grant (as Hugh Grant back when he was cute, essentially) is hilarious and wonderful: part literature, part junk, all pleasure.
And then there's Tommy (1975). Films came before, and films followed, but, fully aware of the indulgence at hand, allow me to say that experiencing Tommy -- restored, with Quintaphonic Sound! -- twice last year, with Mr. Russell in attendance: these were some of the most exciting cinematic events I've ever attended (amongst many). Huge thanks, significantly, to entertainer, British musicologist, man-about-town and HuffPost columnist Martin Lewis, for bringing Ken to the City of Angels (before he became one), and making these amazing encounters possible. Note: Mr. Lewis is the expert; whereas I am here today to gush. I'm even wowed by Mr. Russell's latter-day indie movie, The Fall of the Louse of Usher (sic), which he produced with the swoony international vocal group Mediaeval Baebes, in their prime. Even if nobody's heard of it, it warms my heart that he made it.
Mr. Russell was married four times, had six children, and is survived by his wife, Lisi Tribble. He wrote novels, practiced photography and made many films you should see. He will be missed by millions, for many years to come.
- First, credit where due: Grandier68, good work with the recent retrospective! (btw: There are a few Indiewire articles about Russell. Are you the guy with the Duran Duran-Roger Taylor hair? If so, thanks as well for sprucing up the city.)
- Note: Martin Lewis is responsible for so much astounding Britpop excitement that it's usually a safe bet that he's involved.
- For co-raves and fixes, thank you.
- AND . . .I have enough petulant human beings in my life that I don't need to argue with cartoon characters. The piece above was written promptly after Ken's death was announced. It was and is intended to be a salute, not a perfect laundry list. I close here with this: Ken Russell left us with an amazing, outrageous and LARGE body of work -- more than most people achieve in any field. A Master (undisputed, or you could say indisputable) is judged not by grade-point average, but by vastness of spirit and expression. If Orson "Paul Masson" Welles is considered an undisputed Master (which is generally the case), then certainly Ken Russell deserves that distinction. Give me Tommy over Citizen Kane any day! Q.E.D.
- And it's Christmas as I write this. (Uh, happy birthday, "Jesus"?) Check out a Master at work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQE298PYhrg
But MANY, MANY people find him a self-indulgent hack, and certainly he was incapable of subtlety. I posted a little tribute to him on my FB page yesterday, expressing my appreciation of what I felt his better works wre. One friend left this comment: "Personally, I refuse to accept any and all hagiographies (either pre-or post- mortem), praising any so-called 'artists' who produced nothing but self-indulgent crap; movies, music, novels, or whatever. I don't need to say any more on the subject, because this picture [a still from TOMMY] speaks for itself. What rubbish."
Agree with him or not (And I do not agree with him. I was pleased that several other friends lept into the thread to defend him), THAT is disputing Russell's mastery. He is NOT an UNDISPUTED master of the cinema; he is a HIGHLY disputed, unique filmmaker. That's just a stupid thing to say. Embrace the dispute, Russell did.
"Ken is survived by five children (Alex, James, Xavier, Toby, and Victoria) with his first wife Shirley Russell (née Kingdon), two children (Molly and Rupert) with his second wife Vivian Russell (née Jolly), one son, Rex, with his third wife Hetty Baynes, his fourth wife, the beautiful and talented musician Lisi Tribble (aka Elize Russell), the perpetual work of his good friend Mark Kermode, and the many many hearts and minds of cinema lovers around the globe."
It's on par with Women in Love and The Rainbow as one of his best films.
http://www.abusewatch.net/Whelan.php
And Helen Mirren! Hubba-Hubba!