THE FILM WHICH CHANGED MY LIFE: Ken Russell`s `Isadora`....BBC Monitor...I first saw it on Channel 13 in the States during the Sixties. Although Russell borrows embarrassingly from seminal Russian filmmakers his film is still avant-garde in its anglicizing of foreign idioms. Russell manifests Hitchcock`s ideal of a film being 2/3rds silent whilst his use of music and poetry intercut with dialogue and within the docu-drama form sets it far and above anything else coming out of Britain at the time. Immaculately shot, beautifully acted, precisely cut, `Isadora` remains to this day a moving an an inspirational film. It is available to view pro bono at the Mediatheque where I viewed it recently and wept (again) To my mind along with `Dante`s Inferno` it is Kens best film and it does not star Glenda Jackson. Ken Russell is a sadly neglected British genius whom I believe is as great as Hitchcock. Both Irish- both genius- both screwed-up...both repressed. But where Hitchcock suppressed Russell exhibited. The exhibitionism as a reaction against repression is what gives Ken`s films that `cutting edge`.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 07:33:33 +0000
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