The Music Lover - Music And Images The Art Of Britain's Greatest Filmmaker

Description

Anthology of film music by director Ken Russell, the enfant terrible of British cinema. Drawn from his groundbreaking films of the 1960s and 1970s, including the hugely popular "Elgar - Portrait of a Composer." Russell's work is uncompromising and controversial. He directed "Tommy" for The Who with his usual virtuosity, while "The Devils," a heavily censored film, shook the system; fifty years later, the extended version is still considered too blasphemous for the general public. Inspired by Orson Welles, admired by Michael Powell, Ken Russell left his mark on British cinema of the 1960s and 1970s with his superbly crafted, often highly controversial docufictions about the lives of classical music composers. Drawn to cinema through the excellent British television programs "Monitor" and "Omnibus," he devoted his career to composers such as Elgar, Debussy and Delius, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Liszt. Russell did not mince words in exposing their weaknesses and inner demons on screen, alongside their genius. Until then, the immortals were considered sacred. Ken's cinema was uncompromising, passionate, and instinctive, revealing a gift for marrying music and images; giving rise to unforgettable scenes like that of the naked wrestlers in 'Women in Love.' Ken Russell's audacity was widely admired. For some, he was nothing less than the savior of British cinema, while others saw him as an extravagant "reckless eclectic," in search of provocation. His masterful and incendiary work, 'The Devils,' deeply divided audiences, but is considered by his followers to be one of the ten greatest films of all time. This edition includes musical excerpts from Elgar - Portrait of a Composer (voted by Sunday Times readers as "the most memorable television program ever made"), from the film Debussy, Delius: Song of Summer, The Music Lovers (Tchaikovsky) and Mahler, as well as from Dante's Inferno (Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood), Savage Messiah (Scott Antony's sparkling debut as the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska), and the film that launched Russell, D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love (for which Glenda Jackson won the Academy Award for Best Actress).