A Ken Russell Retrospective

Over the last few months, I’ve been steadily working my way through some of director Ken Russell’s early work, particularly the episodes he made for the BBC series Monitor, a British arts program that ran from 1958 to 1965 and ...

So far in my Ken Russell column, I’ve covered a number of his early films for the BBC program Monitor — particularly his artist biographies like Elgar and The Debussy Film — and this later documentary, Always on Sunday (1965), ...

This week my Ken Russell series continues with a look at some of his short, music-themed episodes for the BBC’s Monitor series, which he contributed to from 1959 to 1965, during the early years of his career as a director. ...

“Pleasure is the law.” -Claude Debussy Though it was technically an episode made for the BBC’s Monitor program, a series primarily comprised of art documentaries, Ken Russell’s The Debussy Film (1965) is a feature length film, and though Russell had ...

Recently I began my Ken Russell retrospective with a look at Elgar (1962), one of the director’s early yet influential composer biographies, made as a lengthy episode of the BBC series Monitor. Russell was involved in the series from 1959 ...

Recently, I finished a lengthy series on Polish director Andrzej Zuławski and, though I definitely intended to take a few weeks off before deciding on another under-appreciated arthouse director to explore, Ken Russell just would not be denied. The idea ...