Ken Russell — Director (48)

Movie

The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002)
The Fall of the Louse of Usher WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: James Johnston / Lisi Tribble …
Rock star Roddy Usher is confined to an insane asylum after murdering his wife. There, he is given various shock treatments by Nurse Smith and Dr Calahari, resulting in a series of bizarre and nightmarish adventures.

Movie

London Moods (1961)
London Moods IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell is often cited as one of the fathers of the music video, with Tommy (1975) widely recognised as one of the pivotal works in the development of the form. However, as the far more obscure Monitor item London Moods from 1961 proves, he was experimenting with non-narrative illustrations of pre-recorded music fourteen years earlier.

Movie

Aria (1987)
Aria WikiData IMDb TMDB
Nicolas Roeg / Franc Roddam … actor: John Hurt / Theresa Russell …
Ten short pieces directed by ten different directors, including Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, and Nicolas Roeg. Each short uses an aria as soundtrack/sound, and is an interpretation of the particular aria.

Movie

Savage Messiah (1972)
Savage Messiah WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Dorothy Tutin / Scott Antony …
other title: Messia selvaggio / Le Messie sauvage …
In the Paris of the 1910s, brash young sculptor Henri Gaudier begins a creative partnership with an older writer, Sophie Brzeska. Though the couple is 20 years apart in age, Gaudier finds that his untamed work is complemented by the older woman's cultural refinement. He then moves to London with Brzeska, where he falls in with a group of avant-garde artists. There, Gaudier encounters yet another artistic muse in passionate suffragette Gosh Boyle.

Movie

The Rainbow (1989)
The Rainbow WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Sammi Davis / Paul McGann …
other title: La vita è un arcobaleno / Der Regenbogen …
Born to a rich landowner in the waning days of the Victorian era, Ursula Brangwen grows into a beautiful young woman full of imagination and ambition. The free-spirited Ursula begins to feel trapped by her prim surroundings, but her life changes when she has an erotic experience with Winifred, a bisexual teacher. From then on, Ursula puts all of her passion and creativity into the pursuit of sexual fulfillment. But her insatiable quest becomes a source of anguish.

Movie

Salome's Last Dance (1988)
Salome's Last Dance WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Glenda Jackson / Stratford Johns …
other title: L'ultima Salomè / Salomes letzter Tanz …
London, England, November 5th, 1892, Guy Fawkes Night. The famous playwright Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas discreetly go to a luxury brothel where the owner, Alfred Taylor, has prepared a surprise for the renowned author: a private and very special performance of his play Salome, banned by the authorities, in which Taylor himself and the peculiar inhabitants of the exclusive establishment will participate.

Movie

Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
Billion Dollar Brain WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Michael Caine / Karl Malden …
other title: Il cervello da un miliardo di dollari / Milliard dollar hjernen …
A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?

Movie

Valentino (1977)
Valentino
Ken Russell actor: Rudolf Nureyev / Leslie Caron …
The untimely death of silent screen star Rudolph Valentino prompts the many women in his past to reminisce about his troubled rise to superstardom.

Movie

Lisztomania (1975)
Lisztomania WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Roger Daltrey / Sara Kestelman …
other title: Fed musik og sex på drengen
In the 19th century, Romantic composer/pianist Franz Liszt tries to end his hedonistic ways but keeps getting sucked back in by his seductive fellow composer Richard Wagner.

Movie

Antonio Gaudí (1961)
Antonio Gaudí IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Huw Wheldon / Antoni Gaudi
A study of Antoni Gaudí's architecture (especially the Church of the Holy Trinity in Barcelona), his sources of inspiration and his influence on Picasso. (BFI)

Movie

Peepshow (1956)
Peepshow WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Shirley Russell / Norman Dewhurst …
other title: Peep Show
A parable made in the manner of an old silent comedy about artistry and illusion.

Movie

Dance of the Seven Veils (1970)
Dance of the Seven Veils WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Christopher Gable / Judith Paris …
Russell’s composer biopics were usually labours of love. This was the opposite: he regarded Strauss’s music as 'bombastic, sham and hollow', and despised the composer for claiming to be apolitical while cosying up to the Nazi regime. Strauss is depicted in a variety of grotesquely caricatured situations: attacked by nuns after adopting Nietzsche’s philosophy, duels with jealous husbands, literally batters his critics into submission with his music, and glorifies the women in his life and fantasies.

Movie

A House in Bayswater (1960)
A House in Bayswater WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Helen May
A personal and nostalgic film about an apartment building in Bayswater, where Russell once lived, and about the residents who inhabited it. The building is demolished to make way for an unattractive and bland office.

Movie

A Kitten for Hitler (2007)
A Kitten for Hitler WikiData IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Rusty Goffe / Lisi Tribble …
other title: Ein Kitten für Hitler
The result of a challenge from Melvyn Bragg to write a film that Ken Russell himself would be eager to see banned, was A Kitten For Hitler – a 10-minute short in which a plucky young Jewish boy traverses the globe on a quest to warm the Führer's heart with the gift of a cuddly feline.

Movie

Whore (1991)
Whore IMDb TMDB
Ken Russell actor: Theresa Russell / Benjamin Mouton …
other title: Whore - Puttana / A Prostituta …
This melodrama investigates the life of a sex worker, in a pseudo-documentary style.

Movie

Gothic (1987)
Gothic IMDb TMDB
Living on an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.