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Notes
1Unless otherwise indicated, all remarks by Ken Russell are from the present author's interview, 13 July 2003, East Boldre, Brockenhurst, England.
2A recent discussion of the film can be found in John Gardiner, “Variations on a Theme of Elgar: Ken Russell, the Great War, and the television ‘life’ of a composer,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 23, No. 3 (August 2003), 195–209.
3Useful overviews and commentaries on Russell's biopics can be found in the following books and articles: John Baxter, An Appalling Talent: Ken Russell (London: Michael Joseph, Ltd., 1973); Stephen Farber, “Russellmania,” Film Comment, Vol. 11, No. 6 (November–December 1975), 40–47; Joseph Gomez, Ken Russell (London: Frederick Muller, Ltd., 1976); Joseph Gomez, “‘Mahler’ and the Methods of Ken Russell's Films on Composers,” The Velvet Light Trap (Vol. 4 (1975), 45–50; Ken Hanke, Ken Russell's Films (Methuen, NJ: Scarecrow Press); Robert Phillip Kolker, “Ken Russell's Biopics,” Film Comment, Vol. 9, No. 3 (May–June 1973), 42–45; Gene D. Phillips, Ken Russell (Boston: Twayne, 1979). See also Diane Rosenfeldt, Ken Russell: A Guide to References and Resources (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1978). Russell himself has written about his work in several volumes: Altered States (New York: Bantam, 1991); The Lion Roars: Ken Russell on Film (Boston and London: Faber and Faber, 1993); and Directing Film: From Pitch to Premiere (London: B T Batsford, 2000).
The following is a chronological listing of Ken Russell's composer biopics: Prokofiev: Portrait of a Soviet Composer (1961), Elgar (1962), Bartok (1964), The Debussy Film (1965), Song of Summer [Delius] (1968), The Dance of the Seven Veils [Richard Strauss] (1970), The Music Lovers [Tchaikovsky] (1970), Lisztomania (1975), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1984), The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner (1990), Arnold Bax (1992), The Secret of Dr. Martinu (1993), Classic Widows [William Walton, Bernard George Stevens, Benjamin Frankel, Humphrey Searle] (1995), and Elgar: Fantasie of a Composer on a Bicycle (2002). Russell has also produced The ABC of British Music, an overview of classical and pop British composers and musicians, and Classic Widows, portraits of composers William Walton, Bernard George Stevens, Benjamin Frankel, and Humphrey Searle. At this writing, Russell has entered negotiations with Melvyn Bragg concerning a possible project about Antonin Dvorak.
4Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Melvyn Bragg are taken from two interviews with the present author, conducted at Television Center, London, in 1977 and on 21 July 2003. Melvyn Bragg (Lord Bragg of Wigton) is Controller of Arts for London Weekend Television (LWT), and he supervises arts programming for four channels in British broadcasting, ITV, BBC1, BBC2, and Channel 4. His association with Ken Russell began in 1965 at the BBC, where they co-wrote the script of The Debussy Film (1965). Their next project was a biopic about Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers. Another script, Nijinsky, was begun but never completed. Bragg worked as a script consultant for Russell's Women in Love: “What I did on that was to go through the Lawrence book with Ken and indicate the things in it that seemed absolutely essential, the key scenes,” recalls Bragg. “We talked it over in detail.” As producer/editor of the South Bank Show for London Weekend Television, Bragg has commissioned and broadcast many of Russell's composer-related productions, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, The Strange Affliction of Anton Bruckner, Arnold Bax, and, most recently, Elgar: Fantasie of a Composer on a Bicycle (2002).
5Despite the success of Elgar, Russell purportedly was not satisfied. “The film was all too lovely, like a TV commercial for the Malvern Hills! I was perhaps too much in love with the man's music to see what really produced it.” Fifteen years later, in 1977, Russell was talking of a remake, in which he promised to show “the darker side of his life as well as the lyrical, colorful side … this time I would want to depict the complete man, ‘warts and all,’ as they say” (quoted in Phillips, 39).
6There are many allusions to Russell's 1962 Elgar film—the affectionately gentle tone, recurring images of the composer (James Johnston) bicycling through the Malverns to the music of the Introduction and Allegro for Strings, the kite-flying with his daughter, Carice, the ironic juxtaposition of images of wounded soldiers to the “Pomp and Circumstance” music; and the quotations from The Dream of Gerontius, to name just a few. Other scenes bring us some new thoughts about Elgar, rendered in the chamber style of Russell's later composer films. For example, unlike the first film, there are now hints, derived from the musical portraits in the Enigma Variations (that most frankly programmatic of Elgar's symphonic works) that Elgar enjoyed relationships (probably platonic) with other women in his life besides the dutiful and loyal Alice (portrayed here by Elize Russell and musically evoked by No. 1, “C.A.E.”). Excerpts from the No. 10 (“Dorabella”) enhance romantic scenes with Dora Penny, a young student whose stutter is cleverly captured in the tripping patterns of the notes; and the No. 13 (“Romanza”) evokes the ill-fated romance with Helen Weaver, Elgar's first love, whose premature death is visualized a la Millais' painting, “Ophelia,” (itself a reference to Russell's biopic about the Rossetti circle, Dante's Inferno). Other source music, excerpts from Falstaff and the cadenza of the Violin Concerto, accompany, respectively, a picnic scene with Rosa Burley, one of Carice's school teachers, and a fantasy image of a gossamer-clad young female dancing along a beach (so reminiscent of the Garden of Fand episode from the Bax film). Russell suggests these women—like the dream-like figures that haunted Tchaikovsky, Martinu, and Bax, represented the youthful ideals of love that had been thwarted by Elgar's thoroughly respectable, if not entirely romantic marriage.
7Russell has recounted events from his childhood in several autobiographical publications. See the aforementioned Altered States: The Autobiography of Ken Russell (1991); The Lion Roars: Ken Russell on Film (1993); and Directing Film: From Pitch to Premiere (2000).
8Russell recreates these childhood memories in amusing fashion in his film, Russell on Russell, telecast on Melvyn Bragg's The South Bank Show.
9 Song to Remember was a Columbia picture, directed by Charles Vidor and starring Cornel Wilde as Frederic Chopin and Merle Oberon as George Sand. Released in 1945, it garnered many favorable reviews. However, writing in the New York Herald Tribune on 26 January 1945, critic Otis L. Guernsey, voiced serious objections: “‘A Song to Remember’ is not a motion picture to remember. Its two-hour Technicolor contemplation of Frederic Chopin's life is a gilded screen biography whose hero conforms to all the Hollywood conventions governing historical celebrities …. Such liberties may be taken with historical details if the cause of drama is served thereby—but fiction has not turned out to be more stimulating than truth in the glossy monotone of ‘A Song to Remember.’”
10Quaint as it might seem nowadays, producers Norman Swallow, Humphrey Burton and Huw Wheldon followed BBC strictures of the 1950s in strongly objecting to Russell's desires to use actors to impersonate composers. “This kind of thing would be much more effective if the people concerned were suggested rather than literally seen,” wrote Swallow in a memo to the Head of Films, dated 7 April 1959 (BBC Written Archives, Reading, File T32/1, 001/1). Wheldon, likewise, warned that such dramatizations could result in a product that “will seem hollow, like cardboard, as most of them do” (quoted in John Baxter, 122). However, Russell gradually won concessions. In his Prokofiev (1961), for example, he was allowed to photograph an actor's reflection in a pool of water; next, for Elgar (1962) he was permitted to use several actors in long shot (but without dialogue) to impersonate the composer as a youth, a young man, and in middle age; and for his third composer film, Bartok (1964), he photographed actor Boris Ranevsky in closeup (but again, without dialogue). Melvyn Bragg recalls: “All this must sound silly now, but it was a very real problem for us to overcome in those days. The BBC's argument was, ‘You'll break the faith with the audience, how can they believe any of it?’” The Debussy Film (1965) marked the first time an actor (Oliver Reed) impersonated a composer and spoke lines.
11In the present writer's opinion, Bartok, while little known or remembered today, is one of Russell's finest achievements. It deals primarily with Bartok's years as an émigré in New York City, from 1940–1945.
12When Bragg came to the BBC Russell was already its “star turn.” “He had made lots of acclaimed films,” Bragg says, “particularly the Elgar, which was already regarded as a landmark. He was considered the man who could make films at the BBC, as opposed to the standard ‘programmes,’ which were heavily influenced by radio. Having a man who could make films was rather unexpected for them.” Indeed, according to an audience research report conducted by Monitor on 25 June 1964, the telecast of Bartok “aroused plenty of active interest (to some degree hostile, but chiefly of a very appreciative kind) among viewers in the sample audience. Although the eroticism of some scenes, like the “Mandarin” scene, was singled out as “very distasteful to some viewers,” the report concluded that “the quality of Ken Russell's film-making was the subject of very warm praise and, indeed, the photography throughout was noted as most expressive of atmosphere and mood” (BBC Written Archives, Reading. File VR/64/296).
13In the wartime scenes of Elgar, newsreel footage of cheering crowds and proud military processions are accompanied by the music of Elgar's “Land of Hope and Glory.” The film argues, however, that Elgar's patriotic fervor turns to disillusionment with the carnage of war. Accordingly, as the music continues, these jingoistic images are succeeded by shots of slaughter and mutilation (including a procession of blinded and wounded soldiers, marching in a tragically ironic counterpoint to the march music). Protests were raised in the press and by Carice Elgar Blake, Elgar's daughter, insisting this was a distortion of her father's patriotism. Producer Huw Wheldon forced Russell to curtail the length of this sequence, declaring: “It is Elgar's beliefs that counted, not Ken's or mine. And on this Ken and I, as we frequently did, had what you might call an editorial row” (quoted in Baxter, 122).
14 The Debussy Film is the first of Russell's many self-reflexive interrogations into the ambiguity of historical fact and artistic interpretation. The director and actors of the film-within-a-film debate issues concerning biographical fact and dramatic interpretation. By extension, this reflects Russell's own struggles to make his Debussy film. Thus, in both the film and the film-within-a-film, historical fact, dramatic reenactment, and production history overlap and interpenetrate to the extent that one is sometimes indistinguishable from the other. Any confusion in identifying which is which is entirely to the point.
15For Eric Fenby's accounts of his association with Delius, see his Delius As I Knew Him (first published in 1936; revised in 1981). He supplemented the book with the aforementioned Delius (1971) and an article, “Delius,” in Music and Musicians, Vol. 22, No. 262 (June 1974), 26–28.
16BBC Written Archives, Reading. File T53/159/1.
17BBC Written Archives, Reading. File T53/159/1.
18The debate over the degree to which Strauss subscribed to and promoted Nazi ideology continues to this day. Indeed, at a 1992 Bard Festival devoted to Strauss, several biographers and commentators gathered to sift through the arguments, pro and con. Although Strauss never officially became a Nazi, he occupied under Goebbels the post of Director of the Reich Music Chamber from 1944–1935; and unlike his colleagues Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, and Hanns Eisler, he chose to remain in Germany throughout the war. An assessment by Leon Botstein at Bard concludes that Strauss was guilty more of personal, rather than political, accommodation: “Here was a man who, on the one hand, was very wise, very profound—a man who could write masterpieces like Die Frau ohne Schatten and the Metamorphosen—but who chose at this point to put blinders on, not only in his personal life, but in his public life. He really sank to the lowest common denominator of behavior—greed, envy, and political collaboration.” Quoted in John Tibbetts, “Richard Strauss Re-Examined,” American Record Guide, Vol. 55, No. 6 (November–December 1992), 13. See also Michael Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (New York, 2000), 211–263.
19Looking back on his career, Russell has described his critics as “unspeakable reviewers,” as a “bigoted lot” for whom attacks on his work has become a “blood sport.” “Having been pursued for years by unspeakable reviewers,” he noted, “perhaps I have developed a taste for blood myself ….” See The Lion Roars, 151.
20Who knows if Russell really said this to the studio's “suits”? Certainly, he has quoted himself to this effect many times. See Altered States, 56.
21Quoted in Baxter, 183.
22Russell, Altered States, 135. Indeed, there are some striking parallels between Russell and Mahler: Both men converted to Catholicism, both fervently believed in the programmatic implications of music, both have been preoccupied with themes of death, both have created works that are unstable blends of spiritual ecstasy and carnal banality, and both have endured hostile attacks on their work. Alex Ross' description of Mahler's music could well stand in for Russell's films: “Everyone knows his swooning intensity of emotion, not only the famous grandeurs and sufferings, but also the intermediate states of waltz-time languor, kitsch-drenched sweetness and sadness, medieval revelation, military rancor, dissonant delirium, adagio lament.” See Alex Ross, “Mahlermania,” The New Yorker, 4 September 1995, 89–90.
23Jack Kroll, “Russellmania,” Newsweek, 20 October 1975, 99.
24Richard Eder, “Screen: ‘Lisztomania,’” The New York Times, 11 October 1975, n.p.
25Each location sequence is keyed to either the composer's nine symphonies or to several of his other well-known works ( The Fantasy on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, The Song of the Lark Ascending, etc.). Occasionally Russell and Ursula Vaughan Williams dispute the meanings behind the music. For example, when Ursula rebukes Russell's programmatic interpretations of the Second (“London”) Symphony, Russell retorts, “But it's got a lot of naturalistic ingredients, like trams and a lavender girl crying her wares; and you can hear the beggars rattling the coins in their hats!” Ursula scoff, “Maybe it's just a horse's harness!” Russell replies, rather lamely, “It's a very beautiful sound, anyway.”
26Bax is another of Russell's artists whose clumsy attempts to cling to impossible ideals, to sustain the fantasies of lost youth and love, are doomed to failure. Watching Russell act out this role cannot help but suggest that he is enacting similar struggles in his own life. The difference between Russell and Bax, of course, is that whereas Bax ceased his search, Russell continues. Bax is not “the last great Romantic artist,” as Russell described him in the film's prologue. Rather, Russell may well lay claim to that title.
27 Bruckner is also essentially a chamber drama, with only three characters, Bruckner (Peter MacKriel), a beautiful nurse named Gretel (Catherine Nielsen), and her male companion, Hans. Bruckner arrives at what seems to be a sanitarium tucked away in the forest, where his affliction of “numeromania,” or the obsessive impulse to count things, is cured by the kindly, semi-erotic ministrations of the lovely Gretel. It is true that as a result of three nervous breakdowns, in 1867, 1887, and 1891, Bruckner appears to have sidestepped reality and falling into an obsession with numbers. He kept lists of the numbers of prayers said each day, the numbers of dances with girls, the number of statues in the park, etc. “He was obsessed with the need to discover the numbers, characteristics, and substance of inanimate objects,” declares biographer Derek Watson, “such as the ornamental tops of the municipal towers in Vienna.” See Derek Watson, Bruckner (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), x. Yet here, contends commentator Robin Holloway, was a man with an unflinching belief in God, who possessed a “colossal drive to create,” and within whose textbook psychoses lay “one of the mightiest music-machines ever known.” See Robin Holloway, “A colossal drive to create,” Times Literary Supplement, 8 May 1998, 19.
28Quoted in Brian Large, Martinu (London: Gerald Duckworth & Company, 1975), 101.
29Subtitled “A Revelation by Ken Russell,” The Mystery of Dr. Martinu is a psychological detective story about a man searching for clues to his lost identity, a breezy blend of the dime-store psychologizings of Hitchcock's Spellbound and the narcissistic fantasies of Jean Cocteau's Blood of a Poet (with a dash of Hitchcock's Vertigo thrown in). The first half assaults the unprepared viewer with a bewildering barrage of seemingly randomly connected images dominated by the recurring shots of a tower—a lighthouse—and a hand covered with crawling ants. The second half has the amnesia-suffering Martinu (Patrick Ryckart) and a psychiatrist, Professor Mirisch (Martin Friend), struggling to interpret these images. Music from Martinu's Sixth Symphony predominates throughout. Russell finds in this music aural connotations of the church tower from which the boy Martinu gazed down at the villagers far below. “From my room in the tower, the whole of Politcka seemed to be populated with ants,” Martinu tells Professor Mirisch, “all scurrying about their business …. It was always quite a shock to come down to earth.” Such early impressions had a lasting impact on Martinu and his music, as Russell found out when he visited Politcka.
30The work in question is probably Scriabin's Le Poeme de l'extase (Poem of Ecstasy), his Fourth Symphony, first performed in 1908. Scriabin supplied sectional subtitles in French detailing the intermediate states leading to a final musical “orgasm,” represented by fifty-three consecutive bars of C major.