The Great Passions

To accompany the BFI's release of the Ken Russell trilogy The Great Composers they have also released The Great Passions, highlighting the careers of three great artists. The artists in question are painter Henri Rousseau, dancer Isadora Duncan and painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rosetti. All were made for BBC TV.

Each sequence is utterly unique and imbued with the director's artistic genius. It is somewhat of an understatement to say that Russell was ahead of his time. A veritable feast then for the artistically ‘way out', not that one has to be a little open minded to appreciate this director's work…
We kick off, chronologically, with a tribute to Henri Rousseau (forever identified with his 'Jungle series') titled ALWAYS ON SUNDAY (1965). This is an n eccentric 45min labor of love dedicated to the naive, virtually self-taught French artist (exactly the kind of personality that would appeal to Russell). Rousseau achieved little fame is his lifetime and was generally laughed at by the critics. Typically for a Russell film, we have Rousseau played not by an actor but by an artist, James Lloyd (Northern-self taught naive school - see the parallel). The artist in question had been the subject of an earlier Russell documentary. He has few lines and speaks more in voice over and this with a strong Yorkshire accent. Why not? Did Rousseau speak any English? After all, he was a 'working class’ Frenchman. No worries though, for most of the narration is delivered by Oliver Reed, who uses his pukka tones just right. Rousseau was helped in some respects by the diminutive Alfred Jarry (here played by female Annette Robertson and dubbed by a bloke using another northern accent) towards achieving a little success - all lovingly re-created here. Jarry caused a sensation with his “utterly tasteless, outrageous” play 'Pere Ubu' which shocked Paris and is still performed today. The film is full of evocative scenes that will leave an indelible imprint.

Second up is Russell's take on yet another outrageous figure, the American dancer Isadora Duncan in ISADORA (1966, 64min). This is based on Sewell Stokes book and was made in collaboration with him. Stokes, with his high pitched and old style camp accent, actually narrates the film. He clearly adored the divine and extremely offbeat dancer. Russell cast actress Vivian Pickles in the lead and she does not disappoint. As became the norm with Russell this is far from a straight documentary… instead it is more of a film with interspersed narration, much culled from Stokes book. However, it is the striking visual imagery that one will remember. Duncan, as well as being a truly innovative dancer, was very much her own woman and a free spirit. Some might say this contributed to her downfall. She was never one to be backward in coming forward and had more than a little to say for herself. Miss Duncan wasn't just a 'dancer' and her embracing the Communist cause and going to Russia hardly endeared her to the bourgeoisie. It would be true to say that her idealism got the better of her. She certainly should have known better than getting involved with a volatile poet like Sergei Yesenin (Alexei Jawdokimov), to whom she was briefly married and lived in the States. Toward the end of her life Duncan’s star had dwindled and she racked up considerable debts in hotels across the Mediterranean – wherever Duncan was, scandal and public drunkenness soon followed. Eventually she ended up dancing in brothels before meeting her tragic demise when her long scarf got entangled around the wheel in an open automobile and broke her neck. This surely is a cruel twist of fate as several years before, her two children also lost their lives when the automobile in which they were passengers plunged into the river Seine. Full of innovative dance routines and bold visions, director Russell does Duncan’s memory proud.

Last is the longest sequence (88min) and by far the most adventurous of the three, aptly titled DANTE’S INFERNO (1967). Visually stunning throughout, here we have Russell's offering to a great pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, London born Dante Gabriel Rossetti (there were not many of them). When it comes to having a free rein on autobiographical subjects, director Russell goes considerably further than in the two previous sequences. Starting off in a frantic and truly macabre mode, the camera zooms in on open coffin in which lay the remains of Elizabeth Siddal. A hand descends into the coffin and extricates a small book (later discovered to contain some of Rossetti's early love poems) followed by a blend-in title sequence. We then see an assembly of pre-Raphaelite artists burning 'bourgeois' works of art in a bonfire, dancing around it like wild savages and with Rossetti (Oliver Reed) staring directly into the camera in a madly grimacing way. This sets the tone for what is to follow. Talk about anarchy in the U.K.! In a highly poetic and laudanum fuelled vision, passion, art, madness, despair, love and death constantly seem to merge - providing the viewer with an intoxicating and kaleidoscopic glimpse into the circle in which Rossetti existed.
A circle which included such artists as William Morris (Andrew Faulds), Millais (Derek Boshier), Ruskin (Clive Gordon), Burne-Jones (Norman Dewhurst), Holman Hunt (Douglas Gray) and Swinburne (Christopher Logue). Much of the film focuses on Rossetti's romance with his initial model, the consumptive Siddal (Judith Paris) with whom he falls in love (despite her jealously guarding her virginity). Eventually they married after 10 years. Alas it was to be a short lived affair; after losing their child and growing increasingly morbid, Elizabeth eventually took a lethal laudanum overdose and Rossetti was never quite the same again. Their romance, in a curious way, is given an extra dimension of pathos as Elizabeth came from a lowly working class background just like his housekeeper, Fanny Comforth (played by buxom Pat Ashton), with whom he also had ongoing affair and who also spoke with a strong cockney accent.
After some time Rossetti embarks on a love affair with his younger model Janey Morris (Gala Mitchell), the wife of his friend and fellow artist William Morris. Despite initial romance and more positive times Rossetti simply cannot get over Siddal’s death and falls into a deep depression. This culminates in a dramatic suicide attempt by a waterfall in the Lake District (where much of the location scenes were filmed). We come full circle at the end when we return to the retrieval of the artist's poetry from Siddal’s coffin. This, in fact, did occur at Highgate Cemetery although not at Rossetti's request. Oliver Reed outdoes himself in the lead and is ably supported by Judith Paris, who also went on to do considerably more work for Russell. There is, of course, the usual crescendo of the director's favorite classical pieces to highlight the segments, though occasionally they are fused with some old music hall numbers to give some of the scenes 'a silent movie' angle. For example, when Rossetti walks Elizabeth home in a Chaplinesque street scene we are treated to the strains of Billy Bennett's 'She was poor but she was honest' – a fitting epitaph, perhaps, for the tragic Mrs. Siddal.

Furthermore, each of the three films are furthermore accompanied by numerous SPECIAL FEATURES.