Product Description
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Ken Russell at the BBC (DVD)
The iconic award-winning English director, Ken Russell, is best
known for his flamboyant style, his attention to detail and for
being a controversial and visionary artist. Russells approach was
determined by a desire to knock the dust off the biofilm genre:
“The whole idea had degenerated into a series of third-rate
clichés. I wanted to dress people in old clothes and do it in a
totally unreal way, and thus make it more real than ever, and in
the process send up this new civil service/academic way of doing
films.” This collection includes two early films starring Oliver
Reed, The Debussy Film and Dantes Inferno about Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, as well as Always on Sunday about Henri Rousseau,
Isadora: The Biggest Dancer in the World, A Song of Summer about
Frederick Delius, and Dance of the Seven Veils about Richard
Strauss. These early films paved the way for his brilliant
carrier that has spanned six decades.
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Many American fans, like myself, who have seen most of Ken
Russells films, probably dont even know these biopics he did
for the BBC prior to his feature film career exist. And these six
hour-long documentaries collected on Ken Russell at the BBC may
be his finest works. Russell is well known for narrative features
with revolutionary undertow such as Women in Love, The Devils,
and Tommy, a rock opera about the Who. The films included on this
three-disc set, all in black and white, are clearly those in
which Russell established his affinity for portraying
iconoclastic eccentrics, and each has its own experimental merit,
stylistically and conceptually. Though it is unfortunate that
there is a proliferation of cheesy re-enactments in todays film
and television, one will be surprised to see how brilliantly this
pioneer did it. Each documentary, here, enlists actors to portray
the artistic luminaries of various historical periods. But the
films so keenly observe their characters behaviors, factually
and poetically, that one learns about Russells subjects on the
sly, being entertained all the while. Occasionally narrators
tease their subjects by pointing out absurd moments, reminding
the viewer of documentarys subjective nature, and of the
humorous potential in many historical tales.
The documentaries heighten their subjects flair for drama, and
take interpretive liberties to recount the lives of those on
screen. Impassioned explosions, nervous breakdowns, and tragic
calamities are the norm. Always on Sunday (1965) studies how
genius is manifest at great cost in Henri Rousseau, after the
death of his wife and a friendship with Surrealist colleague,
Alfred Jarry. Dantes Inferno (1967) depicts the Pre-Raphaelite
set, focusing on Dante Rosettis fiery persona and its negative
effects on his muse, Elizabeth Siddal. In Isadora Duncan: Biggest
Dancer in the World (1966), the arts and crafts-era mistress of
movement maniacally travels the world in search of funding for
her dancing schools. Though the characters depicted are wildly
different, they share blinding passions and melodramatic means of
achieving their ambitions. Many of these films are narrated in
the third person, but occasionally their subjects share dialogue,
elaborating the dramatic sense. Song of Summer (1968) is the
breakthrough, starring young composer, Eric Fenby (Christopher
Gable), who moves in with blind, paralyzed elder musician,
Frederick Delius, to help finish his scores. Third-person
narration fizzles out early on to allow the characters to speak
about the need to create, even when handicapped. Delius and
Fenbys relationship strengthens as the two develop their music
together, and gorgeous landscape scenes, or scenes depicting high
human emotions, roll as soundtrack to the composers works as the
film progresses. Heavily dramatized, the only documentary aspect
to this film seems to be Russells dedication to tying film to
music, by showing how Delius visualized his music. Ken Russell at
the BBC says as much about the quality of BBC programming during
the era as the directors unhinged imagination, and its a wonder
to view these films as precedents to what the BBC also pioneered
a decade later in the 1970s, namely the much more fact-based
documentaries, hosted by scientists and scholars like nature man,
David Attenborough. Trinie Dalton