Freud, childhood and decay

Russell has a childish side to his filmmaking, so schoolboy images infiltrate his films.  This includes Nazis, who are comic rather than threatening and rotting corpses, And more innocent memories of childhood from kites to rocking horses to sailor suits.  D.H. Lawrence often used snake imagery, a Freudian reference to the penis, and in Russell snakes adorn many of his films. So when in Gothic Mary Shelley confronts the knight in armour (a recurring image from Knight on Bikes onwards) with a snake crawling round it, we are given a subliminal hint as to what her real fear is.

Also in Gothic when Byron sees eyes appearing from the woman's breast, this is elementary Freud.

Dreams

Dreams allow Russell to escape the format of films, and introduce new imagery. Often the dreams are the most controversial elements of his films, from Sister Jeanne's Christ/Grandier fantasies to the banned (on posters) imagery of Gothic.

Corpses, decay and dummies

Decay and death fills Russell's films. But the most striking images are the holocaust scenes of The Devils, or mutated into comedy via plastic dummies, in French Dressing.

Cripples, wheelchairs, sensory deprivation

Three totally different films, Song of Summer, Tommy and Altered States, deal with sensory deprivation. But cripples and wheelchairs fascinated Russell from the amateur films such as Peepshow about a school for cripple beggars, through to the ominous dream sequence in Pop Goes the Easel to Lady Chatterley.

Ironically in Salome's Last Dance the leading character Salome is, unknown to the general viewer, played by a blind actress.

Nazis

The Nazis in Russell films are comic characters incapable of carrying out the holocaust Russell also depicts.

Trains and boats and horses

A train journey is a rite of passage for Mahler and Tchaikovsky, and also to Eric Fenby arriving in Song of Summer. In Savage Messiah the train almost stops Gaudier delivering his flowers of love.

Rowing boats occur from Elgar and Song of Summer to Women in Love to Clouds of Glory to Gothic, often linked to sacrifice.

  Horses show untamed passion in The Rainbow.

The sailor suit, the children's swing

Presumably images locked in childhood, sailor suits and swings recur in Russell's films. The former reminiscent of Death in Venice, the latter providing abstract imagery in even minor films such as Mindbender.

The following themes occur: