Monitor classics

Working for the BBC´s Monitor arts programme Ken was allowed to develop from 15 minute shorts to longer films, and he produced some of his best work in this period. He had a professional organisation backing him up, but also had to cope with limited acting resources. His inventiveness is remarkable and he combined highly artistic films with wide commercial success: he became the most sought after documentary director. Says Russell we made films on living artists and when there were no more of them left we turned to making films about dead artists.

1961 Portrait of a Soviet composer

Russell's first full length television film about the composer Prokofief.  The producer Huw Wheldon initially did not want actors in the documentaries. Russell gradually worked around this, initially for the Prokofief film showing only the hands and back of the actor, and once the actor reflected in water.  Interestingly this only applies to the actor playing Prokofief.  The actor playing the critic is shown in full and even talks in one scene.

The famous mirror scene converts two actors into a crowd.  At one point an actor is arguing with his own image in the mirror.   Russell uses the same trick in other films.

The film includes Prokofief´s music for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, which Russell parodied in Billion Dollar Brain. Similarly the historical footage of the Russian revolution, is also Eisenstein's film Oktober. Eisenstein used actors to recreate history- Russell was not yet allowed to do so.  The Music Lovers shows heavy influence of Portrait.

1962 Pop goes the Easel

A biography of four pop artists (art not music). The title is a pun on the expression pop goes the weasel.  This was the first documentary to treat pop-art as a serious movement rather than as a joke. Unfortunately the four artists Derek Boshier, Pauline Boty, Peter Blake and Peter Phillips and  have not stood the test of time with only Blake retaining minor acclaim.  The four artists, who seem to live in a sort of commune, play with cowboy guns (edited with a cowboy firing back) or try and fail to look natural in front of the camera as they discuss their work.

The programme is introduced by Huw Wheldon and after this formal beginning it moves into mixtures of art and music (Buddy Holly etc), the film itself very much in pop art style.

The only really good scene is a dream sequence where Pauline Boty is chased round corridors by a woman in a wheelchair. The dark glasses and hands pulling the wheels forward (compare Tommy) are genuinely menacing.

Restricted by black-and-white Russell handles the colour artworks well, but compared with for example Savage Messiah the subjects are just too boring to carry the film and end up looking very pretentious. Tony Hancock's The Rebel from 1961 covers the same material satirically (with Oliver Reed as one of the artists).  The party sequence is copied later in Song of Summer and there is a scene playing pinballs (Tommy).

Glimpses of the future: Pauline Boty looks out the window like Glenda Jackson at the end of The Music Lovers, and sings I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles as if she was in The Boyfriend.  All four go to a wrestling match which presages Women in Love.  The photography throughout is beautiful, black and white atmospheric imagery reflecting Russell's background as a photographer.

 
Camera is by Ken Higgins (Elgar, French Dressing), editor is Alan Tyrer (Elgar).  Derek Boshier would later appear in Dante's Inferno playing Millais, and Pauline Boty would appear in Bartok, more painters turned Russell actors.  In a revival of the film twenty years on, the three male artists discuss the film- Pauline died a few years after the making of Pop Goes the Easel.

Site visitor Adam Smith adds (thanks Adam):

You mention the 1991 revival which was orchestrated to coincide with a big Pop retrospective exhibition. One result of all this was a modest Pauline Boty revival, granting her long-overdue recognition. Not a star yet perhaps, but certainly recognised in the Pop world. Peter Blake has always enjoyed a wider currency, and is certainly no has-been. Peter Phillip's work is better-known than you might think (the cover of The Cars' Heartbeat City album is typical of his highly distinctive and collectable work). Derek Boshier was refreshed thanks to a big 60s exhibition at the Barbican in 1993, but appears in all the textbooks. So I think you can afford to rate them all a little higher in your episode summary now.

1962 Preservation Man

Bruce Lacey seems to keep everything.  The film starts with him riding a penny-farthing (and if you look closely you can just see the feet of schoolchildren chasing after him).  He stops by crashing into a tree.  Throughout the film he seem a mix between Buster Keaton and Groucho Marx and even his children are involved as they play on a giant stuffed camel in his house.

Lacey is not interesting enough for the film, he seems merely foolish.  However the films does have some images that Ken would use later- the knife thrower comes back in Mahler, the chain of people on skates in French Dressing.

And the dummy coming to life (Lacey wearing what looks like the costume the Beatles would later use on Sgt Pepper) is a reminder of Ken as a young actor when he had to stay on stage inside a suit of armour the whole play, only coming alive for the climax.

1962 Mr Chesher´s Traction Engines

The films starts with A.W. Chesher lamenting the disappearance of English farmland, with some farms being turned in an aerodrome.  The films moves to Chesher who collects traction engines, and then we discover he does paintings of the engines.  He seems to know everything about the machines, and though he talks of technical details, his hypnotic voice makes it seem like poetry.  His painting style has some traces of Lowry and Stanley Spenser.

He paints in his house on a small table, with his wife beside him: she is devoid of emotion and crocheting continually.  He has to put a sheet over the table to avoid paint spilling- obviously something his wife insisted on. And he draws his engines in country scenes, good primitive paintings. 16 minutes.

1962 Elgar

For the 100th edition of Monitor something special was required.  Russell came up with the documentary about the composer Elgar which became the most loved television programme in the 1960s.

Not only did it establish Russell as a film-maker - it led to him directing his first cinema film French Dressing - but it also started a revival of Elgar, from being totally neglected and regarded as out-of-date (similar to Kipling now) to one of the best loved English composers.  Opening with the boy Elgar riding a white horse over the mountains, the film couldn't fail to win the audience over.

The conventional documentary style (talking heads and empty buildings) is abandoned for a film which gives a feeling for Elgar and how he lived and why he composed.  Using actors to play Elgar at various ages was controversial within the BBC- it was felt actors should not appear in documentaries. For Elgar they were not allowed to speak in the film.

Elgar is played by George McGrath and Peter Brett (who would shortly after write the screenplay for French Dressing).  The editor is Alan Tyrer and sound is by Russell regular John Murphy.  The script is by Russell, with Huw Wheldon writing and speaking the commentary.  Ken Higgins is the photographer, his talent and Russell's imagery is stunning:

Controversially Russell played the patriotic Land of Hope and Glory to scenes of First World War carnage as the blind lead the blind.

Criticism was muted when the queen expressed admiration of the film.  The Catholicism of Russell also comes over:

One of the landmarks of television (Song of Summer is another) alongside Ken Loach (Cathy Come Home).  Russell later tried to raise finance for an Elgar film but didn't succeed.  40 years on he has made a new Elgar film for Melvyn Bragg.

1963 Watch the Birdie

About David Hurn the Magnum photographer. Hurn was a friend of Russell from the days that Ken was also a photographer.  Hurn´s girlfriend Alita Naughton would appear in French Dressing.  The films includes an early photo story by Ken Russell.  The photo of Russell directing Watch the Birdie is from "An Appalling Talent".

1964 Lonely Shore

Described as a fantasy, about the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes who died in 1996.  "No-one is left alive in England.  All that remains are fragments of our civilisation" (Radio Times, 11 Jan 1962).  The script was based on writings by Jacquetta Hawkes, the film editor was Allan Tyrer, associate producers were Nancy Thomas and Humphrey Burton and the editor was Huw Wheldon who also introduced.  It was broadcast on BBC 1 on Sunday 14 Jan 1962.

Russell wanted to create an atmosphere of desolation and used dummies on a shore (the Thames in London).  Dummies appear in many of Russell's work from the amateur Peepshow to his first film French Dressing to Aria and Gothic.

1964 Bartok

A film of the Hungarian composer who ended his days in America. A few years ago his body was exhumed and taken back to Hungary.  Russell was allowed to use an actor to show Bartok, but the actor was not allowed to speak.

Roles are played by Boris Ranovsky, Pauline Boty (from Pop Goes the Easel), Sandor Elos, Morrio Bush and Peter Lannigan.

1964 The Dotty World of James Lloyd

James Lloyd the painter, subject of the film, would later reappear as an actor in Ken's film Always on a Sunday.  This was the last of the Monitor films under Huw Weldon.

1964 Diary of a Nobody

Ken Russell's first professional work of fiction.   Taking time out from documentaries he filmed this version of the comic novel by brothers George and Weedon Grossmith. It is the story of Charles Pooter and his friends Cummings and Gowing ("coming" and "going").  It was the first film in the BBC2 series Six New Films and was broadcast on Saturday 12 Dec 1964.  Russell adapts the novel as a silent film with a voiceover- the actors beautifully overacting, silent film style.

Russell adapted the novel together with John McGrath- they would work together again a few years later on Billion Dollar Brain.  McGrath is also executive producer.  The adaptation is quite faithful though it only covers the first two thirds of the novel.  Ken Russell said the estate of the authors were unhappy at the film, regarding it as a travesty (Ken Russell at the BFI, 29 Jul 2007)- in reality the film captures the novel perfectly.  Ken Westbury was cinematographer- he would later do The Singing Detective- and the editor was Michael Johns.  The superb costumes were by Russell's wife Shirley Russell- the check of Lupin contrast beautifully with the stripes of Mrs. James.  Ivor Cutler provides the music.