![]() As outrageousness in filmmaking became the industry norm in the '80s, Russell's reputation began to fade. At this point, even some of the most devoted fans of Russell's outrageous (but undeniably brilliant) visual sense were fed up with his shock-for-shock's-sake approach and his all-consuming narcissism. ![]() The latter film not only suggested that Rudolph Valentino (Rudolf Nureyev) performed totally nude in his silent films, but also offered up the spectacle of Huntz Hall as producer Jesse Lasky. Russell returned to his musical theater roots with The Boy Friend (1971), a bloated version of Sandy Wilson's intimate 1920s pastiche, and then went back to biography with the insanely inaccurate Lisztomania (1974) and Valentino (1975). But this was kid's stuff compared to Russell's The Devils (1971), an ultraviolent and perversely anachronistic adaptation of Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun. Predicated on the notion that Peter Tchaikovsky and his wife were, respectively, a homosexual and nymphomaniac, the film's much discussed "highlight" is a scene in which Nina Tchaikovsky (Glenda Jackson) allows the inmates in the cellar of an insane asylum to reach up and play with her privates. While some viewers had their sensibilities shaken by Women in Love, others had their sensibilities run through the blender with Russell's next film, The Music Lovers. No director who staged a scene in a mainstream movie in which two men wrestled in the nude could escape notice, and thus Russell became more of a "star" than his actors. If he had any respect for the famous persons whose lives he probed, it was secondary to his fascination with revealing all warts and open wounds.Ī film director since 1963, Russell burst into the international consciousness with 1969's Women in Love, a hothouse version of the D.H. And if he felt that the facts were getting in the way of his story, he'd make up his own - frequently bordering on the libelous. Russell made a name for himself (albeit a name not always spoken in reverence) during the first half of the '60s by directing a series of iconoclastic TV dramatizations of the lives of famous composers and dancers. Supplementing his dancing income as an actor and still photographer, Russell put together a handful of amateur films in the 50s before being hired as a staff director by the BBC. Here's a bio from the website.īritish director Ken Russell started out training for a naval career, but after wartime RAF and merchant navy service he switched goals and went into ballet. There's a new coat of paint on the front garden gateīut there's more there than first meets the eyeĪs two worlds collide in a moment of truth In the morning he walks past the old house Just give him a chance to go out there and fight Oh they drink their beer and they talk about friendsĭon't tell him what's wrong or what's right 'Cause I remember the reasons he first ran away He thought of his father and his father before him Took his coat off and rolled up his sleeves The shops and the schools and the factories were there proof that some English families really don't leave their home towns! Remarkably, Targett's Cheddar heritage was scientifically traced back nearly 9,000 years. The DNA matched that of Adrian Targett, a school teacher and current resident of Cheddar Village. In his book "The Isles" (a history of Britain and Ireland) author Norman Davies tells of "Cheddar Man", an 8,980-year-old skeleton from which DNA was extracted. In England, even today, many people are born and die in the same small town.
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