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List Price: $59.98
Our Price: $44.99
You Save: $ 14.99 (25%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
Starring: Max Adrian, Maureen Pryor, Christopher Gable, David Collings, Geraldine Sherman
Directed By: Ken Russell
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0883929019694
Format: Box set
Label: BBC Warner
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
Number Of Items: 3
Publisher: BBC Warner
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-09-23
Running Time: 409
Studio: BBC Warner
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
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Editorial Reviews:
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Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 09/23/2008 Run time: 477 minutes Rating: Nr
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Customer Rating:
Summary: 'Ignore the Immortals, Go Out into the Fields and Listen to the Music of Nature'
Comment: 'Ken Russell at the BBC' is an extra-ordinary dvd box-set. In it are some of the great mans greatest works, scandalously only released in the US on R1.(in one fell swoop, the obscene amount I paid for a multi-region dvd player has been rendered money superbly spent.)
'Song of Summer' is probably the finest, most inspiring film ever made about a composer, 'Dante's Inferno' and 'the Debussy Film' both have a simmer/bellow/simmer/bellow performance from Oliver Reed., 'Isadora' is better than the Vanessa Redgrave film version, 'Always on a Sunday' has a real-life French realist painter being played by a real-life Yorkshire realist painter(!) and 'Elgar' was the first music bio to feature actors, though compromised by them only appearing in long-shot.
30 seconds to read and 477 minutes to look, listen and be immersed.
Possibly the most essential collection of BBC films ever assembled in one place (outside of their vaults of course). Imaginative, unique, mystical, lyrical, anti-cliché, anti-intellectual, funny, sad, moving, haunting and not one frame could've been shot by any-one else.
Not one blistering, believable, fevered performance could've been prised out of the superb casts by any-one else.
Not one film-maker in the history of tv OR film has been SO on the side of his audience.
No other 80 year old man could sit on a park bench and be so mesmerising and deliriously enthusiastic about films he made over 40 years ago, and if I was to type 'til I was 80, I would not come close to properly assessing his work on this dvd set.
There are other's involved; Melvyn Bragg writes a couple of creditable scripts, Huw Wheldon writes and narrates the excellent commentary for 'Elgar' and there's some fine work from Dick Bush -the greatest ever British lighting cameraman - but it's Russell's genius. Emblazoned and embellished on every edit, every rising symphonious dawn, every artistic tantrum, every slightly alien look at a European city from an English South Coast perspective, every beautiful girl fighting a futile battle against art AND temperament, every achievement, gain and much, much pain- the eye on the lens and the ear at the stylus is Russell's.
'Ken Russell at the BBC' is the ultimate review. A legacy that will last, and grow in appreciation even when we're all dead and gone for as long as the subjects of Russell's mini-masterpieces.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An incredible bargain for what you get.
Comment: Six films on DVDs, including one never released on any home medium before--the superb, "Always on Sunday". Includes two excellent interviews with Ken Russell: one in 1966 during the making of "Isadora", the other one made just for this DVD. For those who want to experience some of the greatest television films ever made, this collection is a bargain at the quoted price.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Early films of the much-maligned Ken Russell
Comment: Women in Love Before Ken Russell was celebrated by the world for his stunning adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love, and well before Russell evolved into the "bete noire" of film directors that he currently finds himself unjustly titled, Russell made biographical films for the BBC. Russell was always searching for a style which not only encapsulated the life of his subject, but also commented on the times in which his artists existed. He was and always will be an experimenter, for better or worse. Not every film in this set is a success. His film on Debussy (or should I say film-within-a-film) is overly long, poorly acted (for the most part) and ill-conceived; it covers in narration what the visuals should be expressing. His film on Rousseau suffers because of its cheap budget and lack of Technicolor; Russell knows well that Rousseau is no Van Gogh. However, his films about Isadora Duncan and Frederick Delius are masterpieces. The timing of Russell's Isadora came into conflict with Reisz's version; Russell's is superior, with many memorable images. The Delius film is moving, haunting, beautifully written, subtle (a word one does not often hear in connection to Ken Russell), and brilliantly acted. For these two films alone, the set is worthwhile. How unfortunate that Russell's film about Richard Strauss (which I've never seen) was not included. A review of Russell's career is long overdue, and perhaps one day, Russell's best commercial film, The Savage Messiah, will be released on DVD. If you are not a fan of Russell's, nothing I can say will ever convince you. Russell has always evoked screaming matches in the history of filmmaking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Memory does not serve
Comment: Back in the 70s I was fortunate enough to see several of Ken Russell's biography films for the BBC, specifically the ones about Rossetti, Isadora Duncan, and Delius. I loved all three, particularly the first two, and have always bemoaned the fact that they were neither easy to find in home video format, nor particularly affordable when they were to be found. And so, when I saw this collection being planned I pre-ordered. I'd never seen the first three films about Rousseau, Debussy or Elgar, but I was certain I'd love them, too.
Wrong. Dead wrong. Both the Elgar and Rousseau films reminded me of Edward Gorey's work, but done by an uninspired mimic. They were dull and rather silly. The Debussy was, IMO, unwatchable, riddled with all the flaws which make some of Russell's later films such as "The Devils" or "Tommy" virtually unwatchable.
The three I was familiar with do hold up. You have to be willing to meet Russell at least halfway (more is better) with most of his work, accepting the -- let me put this kindly -- unique turn of mind the man possessed. But then I keep telling myself that this was the sixties; everyone was crazy. Or doing drugs.
Bottom line is that if you are a Russell fan, this collection is worth it at least for the three films on the second disk. If you're not. If his excesses drive you insane, and you find his mainstream work difficult to endure, you're going to hate at least half the films in this collection, and probably closer to, well, all of them.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Foundation work of an iconoclast
Comment: Product correction: This set does not include The Dance of the Seven Veils (70), the controversial bioassassination of Richard Strauss. Presumably the Strauss estate has blocked the release of this film as it has done in the past. I would appreciate correction on that statement if I am wrong. In its place is Russell's earlier work, Elgar (62).
This set presents 6 of the films that the British auteur made in the 1960s for the BBC television programs Monitor and Omnibus that move from narrated documentary - Elgar (62), to interpretive biopic - Dante's Inferno (67), and straightfoward drama - Song of Summer (68). In these films we meet 6 great artists - 3 composers: Elgar, Debussy, Delius; dancer Isadora Duncan; primitive painter Henri Rousseau; and Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. All are on display with flaws intact whether struggling for recognition or sponsorship or with their own self-destructive personalities. Russell's sometimes ambiguous feelings for his subjects is evident in that he avoids polite and safe hagiography, which is realistic -- [...] may often be lurking behind works of great beauty. The casts of these films will be familiar faces to those familiar with Russell's troupe in his 70s films: Oliver Reed, Christopher Gable, Max Adrian, and Vladek Sheybal.
The films presented are fairly crisp with many an evocative sequence both in natural settings and in studio. The only flaw is inherent to the quality of the audio of the time, particularly in respect to the soundtracks of the composer films, i.e. tinny. The contemporary interview of Russell describing these films is enjoyable and insightful.
I hope that this release presages the official reissues of this director's great 70s work, most of them biopics, that have been long out of circulation: The Music Lovers, The Devils, The Boyfriend (all 1971!); Savage Messiah (72); Mahler (74); and Lisztomania (75).
For more on Russell: read Joseph Lanza's excellent book, Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films, Chicago Review Press, 2007; and visit Iain Fisher's website at [...] . To see what Russell has been up to in this decade, check out his bit of guerrilla filmmaking, The Fall of the Louse of Usher, 2001.
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