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

Description

An anthology of film music by director Ken Russell, the enfant terrible of British cinema. Drawn from his groundbreaking films of the 60s and 70s, 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 widely censored film, shook the system; fifty years later, the extended version is still considered too blasphemous for the general public. Inspired by Orson Welles and admired by Michael Powell, Ken Russell left his mark on British cinema in the 60s and 70s with his superbly made, often highly controversial docudramas about the lives of classical 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 his words in exposing their weaknesses and inner demons on screen, alongside their genius. Until then, immortals were considered sacred. Ken’s cinema was uncompromising, passionate and instinctive, revealing a gift for blending music and images; giving birth to unforgettable scenes such as the naked wrestlers in Women in Love. Ken Russell’s boldness was widely admired. To 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 regarded by his followers as 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 sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska) and the film that revealed Russell, D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (for which Glenda Jackson won the Academy Award for Best Actress).