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Ken Russell at the BBC Streaming.
Movie Title: Ken Russell at the BBC Ken Russell at the BBC is available for streaming or downloading. |
Product correction: This residence does not include The Dance of the Seven Veils (70), the controversial bioassassination of Richard Strauss. Presumably the Strauss estate has blocked the release of this film as it has done in the past. I would like correction on that statement if I am outrageous. In its spot is Russell’s earlier work, Elgar (62) .
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This position presents 6 of the films that the British auteur made in the 1960s for the BBC television programs Monitor and Omnibus that disappear from narrated documentary - Elgar (62), to interpretive biopic - Dante’s Inferno (67), and straightfoward drama - Song of Summer (68) . In these films we meet 6 stout artists - 3 composers: Elgar, Debussy, Delius; dancer Isadora Duncan; frail painter Henri Rousseau; and Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. All are on prove with flaws intact whether struggling for recognition or sponsorship or with their gain self-destructive personalities. Russell’s sometimes ambiguous feelings for his subjects is evident in that he avoids polite and trustworthy hagiography, which is realistic — [...] may often be lurking leisurely works of broad beauty. The casts of these films will be familiar faces to those familiar with Russell’s troupe in his 70s films: Oliver Reed, Christopher Gable, Max Adrian, and Vladek Sheybal.
The films presented are fairly crisp with many an evocative sequence both in natural settings and in studio. The only flaw is inherent to the quality of the audio of the time, particularly in respect to the soundtracks of the composer films, i.e. tinny. The contemporary interview of Russell describing these films is palatable and insightful.
Buy,Download, Or Stream Ken Russell at the BBC! Click Here
I hope that this release presages the official reissues of this director’s ample 70s work, most of them biopics, that have been long out of circulation: The Music Lovers, The Devils, The Boyfriend (all 1971!) ; Savage Messiah (72) ; Mahler (74) ; and Lisztomania (75) .
For more on Russell: read Joseph Lanza’s edifying book, Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films, Chicago Review Press, 2007; and visit Iain Fisher’s website at [...] . To peruse what Russell has been up to in this decade, check out his bit of guerrilla filmmaking, The Descend of the Louse of Usher, 2001.
Six films on DVDs, including one never released on any home medium before–the estimable, “Always on Sunday”. Includes two suited interviews with Ken Russell: one in 1966 during the making of “Isadora”, the other one made impartial for this DVD. For those who want to experience some of the greatest television films ever made, this collection is a bargain at the quoted imprint.