An Appalling Talent-The Life and Work of Ken Russell

A typical Russellian scene of elegant decadance: Valentino (Rudolf Nureyev) teaches the tango to Nijinsky (Anthony Dowell)
(courtesy Chicago Review Press/Independent Publishers Group)







Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films(Chicago Review Press)
interview with Author Joseph Lanza


Ken Russell's cinematic work and style is so unusual that he usually gets compared to an artist such as Bosch or a writer such as HP Lovecraft rather than any particular film artist (Although he and Nic Roeg seem to get lumped together a lot-Roeg might be David to Russell's Bosch)-The first full-legnth biography of the one time enfant terrible of British Cinema has just been written by Joseph Lanza (who also wrote a biography of Nicolas Roeg and Elevator Music: A Sureal History of Muzak). Mr. Lanza was nice enough to conduct an email interview with FSW about Russell and his work.

MR: You seem to have a special insight and appreciation into the work and "vision" of Ken Russell. How do you account for this and did you suspect you might have a special affinity for him before you began this book?




JL: "I have had an affinity for much of Ken Russell’s work for decades. In the seventies, I had enjoyed The Music Lovers and especially The Devils, but oddly, the film that got me really thinking about Russell was Valentino. Though under-rated, even among its own director at times, Valentino (at least most of it) shows top-notch directing, with staccato dialogue and the kind of overblown acting I associate with the sixties television series Batman. And amid this camp and gaudy glamour, Russell had the courage to put in a scene where Rudolph Valentino is symbolically raped in a prison – it’s the point in the film that veers into true horror. The producers wanted to scissor the scene out, but Russell fought and won to keep it in. This made me realize Russell’s uncompromising style and vision."

MR: Russell seemed to have a real interest in casting interesting performers, but not necessarily polished actors in fairly high profile parts (Nureyev in Valentino for example). Was this something he did deliberately or was it simply a component of his unorthodox outlook?

JL: "I think he had to do it deliberately. He has sometimes lamented Nureyev’s bad acting, but it is no worse than that of the film’s other actors. The exaggerated acting was intentional. Russell must have wanted that alienation effect, so that you see Valentino as more of a cipher – a projection of other people’s sexual hang-ups and power games. I look at Valentino especially as a movie in the Ben Hecht style, particularly Hecht’s Specter of the Rose. That too was about the misguided and often-psychopathic worship of “art.” Everyone’s overacting and coming across as miscast, but that’s all the more fitting for themes about hambones aspiring to be idols of the stage and screen. Russell is best when he works in that heightened reality. I commend that lack of “polish” that makes his best movie moments as clumsy yet as inspiring as an Isadora Duncan dance. Few directors are that brave."

MR: Films like Tommy, Valentino, and Altered States got a lot of press upon their initial theatrical release. Do you feel like these films, and Russell's films in general, have held up well?

JL: "Lousy dialogue and a gauche happy ending hamper Altered States. But Tommy looks intriguing, especially in the way that it had set the trend for the MTV-style video. There have been pop video precursors, such as Scopitones, but Russell, as far back as his parody of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” in The Music Lovers, helped to inspire MTV’s more cinematic entries. And I think Valentino holds up quite well. It certainly has a seventies feeling to it (Art Nouveau enjoyed a revival back then), but I think it could find a new, appreciative audience today that would get the irony."

MR: Do you see Russell's influence in any films and/or filmmakers at present?


JL: "There are smatterings of Russell’s style here and there, but there’s not enough of a conscious homage to his influence. The best I’ve seen is the 2006 film Brothers of the Head. The directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe not only pay tribute to Russell’s impressionist documentary style; they also include Russell himself commenting on the movie’s imaginary film-within-a-film. I wish they’d included more footage that shows up on the DVD extras, with Russell giving his ideas about how subjective truth is often truer than “the facts.” He would have made a grand contrast to the character in the film who plays the self-righteous “cinema verite” director -- the one who rambles on and on about being “real,” yet seems so phony.

MR: Whose idea was it to title the book Phallic Frenzy?

JL "I am happy and proud to say that I thought up that title. My publisher also let me choose the cover image. That probably doesn’t happen often."

See more about he book at
www.ipgbook.com
or
www.chicagoreviewpress.com

The Wonderful World of Neal Gabler

M Rhodes and Neal Gabler at Palmer Vineyards (Long Island) this past July


Walt Disney has gone from being one of the great film pioneers in the 20th century (a claim he staked quiet early) to being perhapes the most misunderstood major figure in film (Orson Welles might be as misunderstood, but Welles used his mangled repuation as a career move). Neal Gabler's major biography of Walt Disney, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Knop), from last fall was a big step in the reviving of Disney's cinematic repuation and also a re-consideration of Disney the man. Gabler, author of many books including An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood and Winchell was gracious enought to be interviewed about his bio of Disney as the first entry on this blog.

MR: You mentioned that hardly any of Disney's first group of animated films made any money (in fact, they typically lost a great deal of money). Why?

NG: "There are many reasons why the films failed financially on first release. For one thing, the war had started in Europe, and Disney was more dependent than most studios on foreign markets. Given the nature of animation, his films traveled better than most live action films. For another thing, the cultural mood had shifted from Snow White in 1937 to Pinocchio three
years later. With the impending war, Americans seemed less inclined to fantasy than they had been. But on the other hand some analysts believed that Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi were so much darker in tone than SnowWhite that they repelled children without attracting adults. It may have even been that the novelty of feature animation wore out quickly with Snow White. The results were devastating for the Disney studio."

MR: Do you think that Disney has been overlooked as a pioneer of the cinema?

NG: "During his lifetime Walt Disney was justly regarded as a major cultural force. Intellectuals embraced him early and viewed him as a kind of naive, unpretentious folk artist, and that characterization lasted at least until the postwar period when the Disney studio was so large that the idea of Disney as naive or as a folk artist seemed anachronistic. Throughout
the 1950s and certainly in the 1960s, his reputation steadily declined and the public divided between those who still regarded him as an artist and those who, while not shortchanging his cultural influence, saw him as a vulgarian who cheapened the culture. The latter view has seemed to predominate since his death in 1966. But having scoured Walt Disney's life, including the story meeting transcripts, I can attest to Disney's personal contributions to his great animations, and anyone who has ever entered one of his theme parks can attest to the way he changed the American consciousness. Every shopping mall, mega-church, theme restaurant, etc., owes a great deal to Walt Disney. So it is not only the way he reinvented animation or the amusement park that serves as his legacy. It is the way he changed the way
we think about the world."

MR: Disney is a great American entertainer, but can he be considered a great American artist?

NG: "If you think of Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi as works of art -- and I do -- then you have to credit Walt Disney as an artist since these films largely emanated full-blown from his head. Disney could very well be called the author of Snow White and Fantasia, and he made significant contributions to Pinocchio and Bambi. In many cases Disney
scrutinized every frame, literally, of a film. His was certainly the governing aesthetic and sensibility. One animator said that of the many who worked at the Disney studio, none who left ever produced anything as good as Walt Disney's work, which he took to mean that Disney himself was the primary creative force. In any case, I think that Disney's visual imagination might very well rank with Picasso's as the two most important of the twentieth century."
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination will be released by Knopf in Paperback in Oct. 2007

MR