Dante’s Inferno (1967)

Dante’s Inferno is a 1967 Ken Russell documentary/biopic about Pre-Raphaelite painter/poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was made for the BBC and screened as part of their Omnibus series.

Russell had been making arts documentaries for the BBC since 1959. At first they were fairly conventional documentaries. The BBC did not approve of having actors portraying historical figures in documentaries. That policy was gradually eased. For The Debussy Film Russell solved the problem by having a film within a film. The critical acclaim for the Debussy Film finally convinced the BBC to let Russell make his documentaries the way he wanted to. It was one of the most sensible decisions the BBC made during the 60s.

Russell’s later BBC documentaries, Dante’s Inferno, The Dance of the Seven Veils and Isidora, are hybrid dramatised documentary-feature films but in practice they’re really feature films. They were in black-and-white and in the 1.37:1 aspect ratio so they were suitable for TV broadcast but they were shot in 35mm so that they could be given at least limited theatrical releases.

Russell was fascinated by artists and composers but he wasn’t interested in treating these figures worshipfully. He wanted to get down to the nitty-gritty of what made them tick. He was interested in genius, but he was particularly interest by geniuses who were either failures in their personal lives or partial failures in their artistic lives.

These mid-60s films are essentially Ken Russell’s personal response to various artistic figures.

The Pre-Raphaelites were all but forgotten by the beginning of the 1960s but there was about to be an explosion of renewed interest in the movement. Dante’s Inferno certainly played some part in fuelling this renewed enthusiasm.

Dante’s Inferno focuses a great deal on Rossetti’s relationships with women, especially his difficult relationships with Lizzie Siddal and Jane Morris. Lizzie Siddal modelled for Rossetti, became his muse and a complicated romantic involvement began. For various reasons (some of them quite reasonable) Rossetti put off any thoughts of marrying her. Lizzie’s health problems led to a reliance on laudanum which became a serious addiction.

Lizzie painted and wrote poetry as well. Her paintings have been ludicrously overpraised for ideological reasons. She had some talent, but those talents were very limited.

In Russell’s version Siddal’s insistence on scrupulous defence of her virginity and Rossetti’s unwillingness to marry her led to predictable problem. A few years later Jane Morris (one of the most famous artists’ models of all time) entered his life which led to a fraught romantic triangle between Rossetti, Jane ands Jane’s husband William Morris. The fact that William Morris and Rossetti were close friends and artistic colleagues complicated things further.

Like all the Pre-Raphaelites Rossetti was besotted with the Middle Ages, with the romance and the chivalry. It was an ideal to which to aspire but he was never able to Iive up to those ideals. The ideal of courtly love was an impossible ideal for Rossetti. He enjoyed the more carnal varieties of love too much.

Rossetti’s career began to falter, partly due to his own drug addiction but perhaps also to the invariably less than unhappy outcomes of his passionate love affairs with women. In this film Russell certainly suggests that he was also increasingly aware that he had failed to live up to his lofty ideals.

As Rossetti Oliver Reed gives one of his finest performances. Reed could be mercurial and passionately intense and extravagant as an actor but he could also be subtle and sensitive and he had extraordinary charm and all of these qualities are in display here.

Judith Paris as Lizzie is wan and needy but that’s presumably deliberate and is perhaps a fair interpretation of Siddal.

Casting Gala Mitchell as Jane Morris was a masterstroke. She was a model with no acting experience but she looks perfect. She has the same kind of beauty as Jane Morris. She looks like the ideal Pre-Raphaelite woman. Mitchell doesn’t get much dialogue. She doesn’t need it. She just has to look Pre-Raphelite-ish and stunning.

One of the things that amuses me about modern critics is the way they so often respond to what they wish the movie said, rather than to what it actually says. There’s a good example here, among the extras. The critic naturally reads Rossetti as the villain and Lizzie as the victim and sees the brilliantly talented Lizzie as having been sucked dry artistically and emotionally by Rossetti. But when you actually watch the movie Lizzie comes across as a whiny, needy, manipulative emotional vampire. And her overdose comes across as a passive-aggressive act. “If I kill myself he’ll be sorry.” Watching the movie one gets the impression that it was Lizzie who sucked Dante dry emotionally. And the movie makes it clear that Lizzie’s talents were meagre.

Russell wanted to make Dante’s Inferno in colour but the BBC wouldn’t come up with the money.

Dante’s Inferno is a typical Ken Russell biopic - it’s his own totally personal response to Rossetti. It’s a brilliant movie, as good in its way as any of his later feature film biopics. Highly recommended.

The BFI Blu-Ray also includes the equally good Isadora and Always On Sunday, his film on Henri Rousseau.

Isadora Duncan, The Biggest Dancer in the World (1966)

Isadora (sometimes known under the title Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World) is a 1966 BBC TV-movie based on the life of the famous but tragic pioneer of modern dance, Isadora Duncan.

The TV-movie was directed by Ken Russell. You might be wondering if you’ll see traces of Russell’s later style in this early work. In fact you’ll see more than traces. This is a full-blown Ken Russell movie.

Russell co-wrote the script with Sewell Stokes, who knew Isadora in the latter part of her life.

While Isadora was funded by the BBC and was screened on the BBC in 1966 it was always intended for theatrical release as well, and it did indeed get a theatrical release. It was something of a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival. The success of Isadora made it certain that Russell would soon make the jump to directing feature films, which in fact he did in the following year.

The considerable amount of nudity certainly indicates that a theatrical release was the intention.

Isadora was made on a minuscule budget (we’re talking about the BBC here) but it was shot in 35mm and while it’s in black-and-white it feels like a feature film rather than a TV production. Russell was pulling out all the stops with the visual and it has all his trademarks.

Isadora Duncan was briefly a sensation in the world of dance. She was an apostle of dance as free expression. Her dislike of any kind of discipline carried over into her personal life.

Her star faded quickly and her wild lifestyle took its toll. She blundered from disaster to disaster.

She enjoyed a brief vogue in the 1960s, being seen as a kind of godmother to the counter-culture.

Russell resists the temptation to idealise or romanticise her. He doesn’t exactly demonise her but he makes no attempt to downplay her extraordinary self-destructiveness and egotism and spectacularly bad judgment. This was a woman set for fame, stardom and riches and it all fell apart and the disasters were all of her own doing. He also does not downplay her vulgarity or her stupidity.

Isadora did have a touch of genius, but a very limited genius. In the opening years of the 20th century her approach to dance seemed exciting and revolutionary - pure expression, unconstrained by rules or discipline. Just dance what you feel. Like all such artistic approaches it was something of a dead end. The vogue for Isadora waned, her wild lifestyle began to catch up with her, her extravagance left her dependent on wealthy lovers who eventually tired of her whims and her dramas.

After the First World War she went to Russia, feeling sure that the Bolsheviks would recognise her as a fellow revolutionary. They did not. She was soon penniless. Isadora’s politics did not go much beyond thinking that being a revolutionary was exciting and glamorous.

An affair with a drunken lecherous thieving Russian poet ruined her even further.

Tragically she ended up being remembered mostly for the bizarre circumstances of her death.

Russell tells her story as an absurdist tragi-comedy. Isadora remains oblivious to the inevitable consequences of her self-destructiveness and self-absorption.

Isadora’s rejection of rules and discipline made her, briefly, a star in the world of dance. It also doomed her to disaster in life. She was ruled by her passions and her emotions and they led her astray every time.

Vivian Pickles (a dancer herself) is superb in the title role.

Russell was not going to let a micro-budget limit his already soaring ambitions. By necessity he had to use some stock footage. He makes extraordinary use of footage from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia.

This does not look like a TV movie. It looks like a Ken Russell feature film.

Russell’s productions for the BBC in the 60s cannot be dismissed as mere tentative experimentations. He was already Ken Russell. He had already chosen his artistic path.

Russell was fascinated by genius but had no interest in worshipful approaches. He liked to get under the skin of the artistic geniuses about whom he made movies and he wasn’t afraid of what he might find under the surface. He also made two notable films about artistic failures - this one and Savage Messiah (1972). They’d make a fine double feature.

Isadora is a major Ken Russell film and a great one. Very highly recommended.