Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell (3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011)The Sunday Times Magazine, The Sunday Times, 18 December 2011, page 64 was a British film director known for his pioneering work in television and film, and for his flamboyant and controversial style. His films were mainly liberal adaptations of existing texts, or biographies, notably of composers of the Romantic era. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios.
Russell is best known for his Academy Award-winning romantic drama film Women in Love (1969); the historical drama horror film The Devils (1971); the musical fantasy film Tommy (1975), featuring the Who; and the science fiction horror film Altered States (1980). Russell also directed several films based on the lives of classical music composers, such as Elgar, Delius, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Liszt.
In 2006, film critic Mark Kermode attempted to sum up Russell's achievement, calling him "somebody who proved that British cinema didn't have to be about kitchen-sink realism—it could be every bit as flamboyant as Fellini. Later in his life he turned to making low-budget experimental films such as The Lion's Mouth and Revenge of the Elephant Man, and they are as edgy and 'out there' as ever".Mark Kermode, speaking to Lauren Laverne, on BBC2's The Culture Show, October 2006.
Early life Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England, on 3 July 1927, the elder of two sons of Ethel (née Smith) and Henry Russell, a shoeshop owner. His father was distant and took out his rage on his family, so Russell spent much of his time at the cinema with his mother, who was mentally ill. He cited the films Die Nibelungen (1924) and The Secret of the Loch (1934) as two early influences.Lanza, Joseph. Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films. Chicago Review Press, 2007; .
Russell was educated at private schools in Walthamstow and at Pangbourne College, and studied photography at Walthamstow Technical College (now part of the University of East London).
Military service Russell harboured a childhood ambition to be a ballet dancer but instead joined the Royal Air Force and the British Merchant Navy as a teenager. On one occasion he was made to stand watch in the blazing sun for hours on end while crossing the Pacific Ocean, because his mentally ill captain feared an attack by Japanese midget submarines despite the Pacific War having ended. Russell moved into television work after short careers in dance and photography.
Career Photography In 1954, Russell started work as a local-interest freelance photographer. His series of documentary "Teddy Girl" photographs were published in Picture Post magazine in June 1955, and he continued to work as a freelance documentary photographer until 1959. During this time, he started directing short films: Peepshow (1956), Knights on Bikes (1956) and Lourdes (1959). He received a lot of acclaim for his short Amelia and the Angel (1959), which helped secure him a job at the BBC.
Documentaries Between 1959 and 1970, Russell directed arts documentaries for Monitor and Omnibus. Russell made Poet's London (1959, about John Betjeman), Portrait of a Goon (1959, about Spike Milligan), Gordon Jacob (1959), The Guitar Craze (1959), Variations on a Mechanical Theme (1959), Scottish Painters (1959), Marie Rambert Remembers (1960), The Strange World of Hieronymus Bosch (1960), The Miners' Picnic (1960), Architecture of Entertainment (1960), A House in Bayswater (1960), Shelagh Delaney's Salford (1960), Cranks at Work (1960, about John Cranko), The Light Fantastic (1960), Journey Into a Lost World (1960), Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (1961), Old Battersea House (1961), Portrait of a Soviet Composer (1961), London Moods (1961), Antonio Gaudi (1961), Preservation Man (1962), Mr. Chesher's Traction Engines (1962), The Lonely Shore (1962) and Watch the Birdie (1962).BRIEFING/ WHO & WHY: Beyond the Huw Seddon, George. The Observer, 15 November 1964: 23.
Russell's films began to get longer: Pop Goes the Easel (1962) and the much admired Elgar (1962) about Sir Edward Elgar (George McGrath). Elgar was the first time that a television arts programme (Monitor) was dedicated to one artistic figure, rather than having a magazine format. It was also the first time that re-enactments were used. Russell fought with the BBC over using actors to portray different ages of the same character, instead of the traditional photograph stills and documentary footage.Walker, John A. (1993), "Monitor BBC TV programme – 1958–1965". . Arts TV / artdesigncafe. Retrieved 29 November 2011.
Early features and rising fame
Russell's first feature film was French Dressing (1964), a comedy loosely based on Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman; its critical and commercial failure led Russell to work further for the BBC. For television he made the 16-minute Lonely Shore (1964), the longer Bartok (1964), about Béla Bartók (Boris Ravensky) and The Dotty World of James Lloyd (1964). In 1964, he planned to make an adaptation of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange (1962) starring the Rolling Stones but abandoned the film after the British Board of Censors advised it would not approve it.
Russell had a noted critical success with the TV movie The Debussy Film (1965), starring Oliver Reed as Claude Debussy, based on a script by Melvyn Bragg. Also well received was Always on Sunday (1965), written by Bragg, about Henri Rousseau (James Lloyd)."Oliver Burns—at the Stake and at Film Critics" Kramer, Carol. Chicago Tribune 22 August 1971: e3. Russell made Don't Shoot the Composer (1966), a documentary about French composer Georges Delerue. He produced and directed the highly praised Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World (1967), about Isadora Duncan with Vivian Pickles.Joseph Lanza Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films p.48
Russell's television work prompted producer Harry Saltzman to hire him to direct a feature film, Billion Dollar Brain (1967), the third Harry Palmer movie starring Michael Caine. He wanted to follow it with a biopic of Vaslav Nijinsky but Brain was a commercial disappointment.Langley, Lee, "The Eisenstein file: LEE LANGLEY describes Ken Russell's work on the Deighton thriller, 'Billion Dollar Brain', The Guardian, 26 October 1967: 8. Russell returned to television for Dante's Inferno (1967) with Reed as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Song of Summer (1968) about Frederick Delius (Max Adrian) and Eric Fenby (Christopher Gable). He once said that the best film he ever made was Song of Summer and that he would not edit a single shot.
Women in Love In 1969, Russell directed what is considered his "signature film", Women In Love, an adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel of the same name about Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, two artist sisters living in post-World War I Britain, from an Academy Award-nominated script by Larry Kramer. The film launched the movie career of Glenda Jackson (who won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for the role) and also starred Oliver Reed, Jennie Linden and Alan Bates. The film is notable for its nude wrestling scene, which broke the convention at the time that a mainstream movie could not show male genitalia. Women in Love connected with the sexual revolution and bohemian politics of the late 1960s. The film's four Academy Award nominations included Russell's only nomination for Best Director.
The film was BAFTA-nominated for the costume designs of Russell's first wife, Shirley; they collaborated throughout the 1970s. The colour schemes of Luciana Arrighi's art direction (also BAFTA-nominated) and Billy Williams' cinematography, which Russell used for metaphorical effect, are also often referred to by film textbooks.
Russell returned to television with Dance of the Seven Veils (1970) which sought to portray Richard Strauss (Christopher Gable) as a Nazi: one scene in particular showed a Jewish man being tortured while a group of SS men look on in delight, with Strauss's music as the score. The Strauss family was so outraged by the film that they withdrew all music rights. The film was effectively banned from being screened until Strauss's copyright expired in 2019.Brooke, Michael, "Dance of the Seven Veils (1970)", BFI screenonline. It was shown in February 2020 at the Keswick Film Festival.
Three films in 1971 Russell followed Women in Love with a string of innovative adult-themed films which were often as controversial as they were successful. The Music Lovers (1971), a biopic of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, starred Richard Chamberlain as a homosexual Tchaikovsky and Glenda Jackson as his wife Antonina Miliukova. The score was conducted by André Previn.
Russell followed that film with The Devils (1971), a film so provocative that its distributor, Warner Bros., refused to release it unless cuts were made; even then, the film received an X rating in both the United Kingdom and the United States, was banned in several countries, and was heavily edited for exhibition in others. Inspired by Aldous Huxley's book The Devils of Loudun (1952) and using material from John Whiting's play The Devils, the film starred Oliver Reed as Urban Grandier, a priest who stands in the way of a corrupt church and state. Helped by publicity over the more sensational scenes, featuring sexuality among nuns, the film topped British box office receipts for eight weeks. In the United States, the film, which had already been cut for distribution in Britain, was further edited but never widely released theatrically in anything like its original state; the original, uncut version has only been shown in the U.S. at film festivals and art houses. In 2017, AMC Networks-owned horror film streaming service Shudder premiered the uncut version of the film for the first time on streaming. Russell's cut was restored by Warner Bros. and the British Film Institute, and shown at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, in anticipation of a theatrical re-release in fall 2026. British film critic Alexander Walker described the film as "monstrously indecent" in a television confrontation with Russell, leading the director to hit him with a rolled up copy of the Evening Standard, the newspaper for which Walker worked.Stuart Jeffries "Ken Russell interview: The last fires of film's old devil", The Guardian, 28 April 2011
Russell followed The Devils with something entirely different—a reworking of the period musical The Boy Friend (1971), with large-scale Busby Berkeley-style musical sequences. Russell cast the model Twiggy, who won two Golden Globe Awards for her performance: Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy and New Star of the Year. The film was heavily cut and shorn of two musical numbers for its American release; it was not a big success.
The mid-1970s Russell wanted to make Little Sparrow, a film about Édith Piaf, or a biopic of King Ludwig of BavariaKahan, Saul, "Ken Russell: A Director Who Respects Artists", Los Angeles Times, 28 March 1971: n18. but neither was made. Instead, he himself provided most of the financing for Savage Messiah (1972). The film is a biopic of the painter and sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (Scott Antony), who died fighting for France at age 23, in 1915, in the trenches of the Western Front during the First World War. The film co-starred Dorothy Tutin and Helen Mirren. He announced a biopic of Sarah Bernhardt with Barbra Streisand but it was not made.Haber, Joyce, "The Oscar of His Dreams Is Wilde", Los Angeles Times, 30 April 1972: d15. Russell worked with David Puttnam on Mahler (1974), which starred Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler.