Ken Russell

Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell, known as Ken Russell (born July 3 1927) is a controversial British film director, particularly known for his films about famous composers.

Early career

Russell was born in Southampton, served in both the RAF and the Merchant Navy, and moved into television work after a brief affair with dancing and photography. In the late 1950s, Russell's amateur films secured him a job at the BBC, where he worked regularly from 1959–1970 making arts documentaries for Monitor and Omnibus. Amongst his best known works from this period were Elgar (1962), The Debussy Film (1965), Isadora Duncan - The Biggest Dancer in the World (1967) and Song of Summer (1968). His television films became increasingly flamboyant and outrageous — The Debussy Film opens with a scene in which a woman is shot full of arrows (a reference to Debussy's The Martyrdom of St Sebastian), while Dance of the Seven Veils (1970), a self-styled "comic strip in seven parts on the life of Richard Strauss", caused such outrage that questions were asked in the British Parliament and the Strauss family withdrew all music rights, effectively banning it from legal circulation. Although the majority of his BBC films were about musical subjects, he also tackled visual art, in the seminal film on British Pop Art, Pop Goes the Easel (1963) and a biopic of French painter Henri Rousseau, Always on Sunday (1965).

Related Topics:
Southampton - RAF - Merchant Navy - Dancing - Photography - BBC - Monitor - Omnibus - Elgar - The Debussy Film - Isadora Duncan - The Biggest Dancer in the World - Song of Summer - Debussy - The Martyrdom of St Sebastian - ''Dance of the Seven Veils'' - Parliament - Pop Art - Pop Goes the Easel - Henri Rousseau - Always on Sunday

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Russell's first feature was French Dressing, a comedy loosely based on Brigitte Bardot's And God Created Woman (dir. Roger Vadim) made in 1963; its critical and commercial failure sent Russell back to the BBC. His second big-screen effort was part of author Len Deighton's Harry Palmer spy cycle, Billion-Dollar Brain (1967).

Related Topics:
French Dressing - Brigitte Bardot - And God Created Woman - Roger Vadim - BBC - Len Deighton - Harry Palmer - Billion-Dollar Brain

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~