PERSPECTIVES: KEN RUSSELL, AN ‘ENFANT TERRIBLE’?

This is how Ken Russell described himself to the Radio Times in 1962 ahead of the broadcast of his BBC film The Lonely Shore (BBC, 1962) – a documentary film narrated from the perspective of alien archaeologists discovering the detritus of humanity, millennia after its extinction. It’s an apt and offbeat summary of a man whose work is among the most idiosyncratic and powerful in British cinema and television. Few, if any, other British directors have polarised critical and public opinion quite so much, and as film director and standard bearer for the Russell legacy Bernard Rose points out in the foreword to this book, Russell’s status as an auteur of world art cinema à la Fellini or Visconti has been unjustly neglected. Nevertheless, since his death in 2011, there has been a gathering momentum in the critical re-evaluation and reaffirmation of Russell’s rightful place within British film and indeed world cinema. This volume aims to contribute to the growing corpus of critical literature on Russell by presenting a range of the most recent research from established and emerging scholars of his work as well as personal reflections from those who knew him, worked with him and loved him, offering new perspectives and insight into Russell’s extensive, diverse, iconic and often iconoclastic body of work, and into his persona and working practices.

The book has several aims but let’s start with what it aims not to do.