He made Poet's London (1959, about John Betjeman), Portrait of a Goon (1959, about Spike Milligan), Gordon Jacob (1959), The Guitar Craze (1959), Variations on a Mechanical Theme (1959), Scottish Painters (1959), Marie Rambert Remembers (1960), The Strange World of Hieronymus Bosch (1960), The Miners' Picnic (1960), Architecture of Entertainment (1960), A House in Bayswater (1960), Shelagh Delaney's Salford (1960), Cranks at Work (1960, about John Cranko), The Light Fantastic (1960), Journey Into a Lost World (1960), Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill (1961), Old Battersea House (1961), Portrait of a Soviet Composer (1961), London Moods (1961), Antonio Gaudi (1961), Preservation Man (1962), Mr. Television Documentaries īetween 19, Russell directed arts documentaries for Monitor and Omnibus. He received a lot of acclaim for his short Amelia and the Angel (1959), which helped secure him a job at the BBC. ĭuring this time, he started directing short films: Peepshow (1956), Knights on Bikes (1956), and Lourdes (1959). His series of documentary ' Teddy Girl' photographs were published in Picture Post magazine in June 1955, and he continued to work as a freelance documentary photographer until 1959. In 1954 Russell started work as a local-interest freelance photographer. He moved into television work after short careers in dance and photography. On one occasion he was made to stand watch in the blazing sun for hours on end while crossing the Pacific Ocean, as his mentally ill captain feared an attack by Japanese midget submarines despite the Pacific War having ended. He harboured a childhood ambition to be a ballet dancer but instead joined the Royal Air Force and the British Merchant Navy as a teenager. He was educated at private schools in Walthamstow and at Pangbourne College, and studied photography at Walthamstow Technical College (now part of the University of East London). He cited the films Die Nibelungen and The Secret of the Loch as two early influences. His father was distant and took out his rage on his family, so Russell spent much of his time at the cinema with his mother, who was mentally ill. Russell was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England, on 3 July 1927, the elder of two sons of Ethel (née Smith) and Henry Russell, a shoeshop owner. Later in his life he turned to making low-budget experimental films such as The Lion's Mouth and Revenge of the Elephant Man, and they are as edgy and 'out there' as ever". įilm critic Mark Kermode, speaking in 2006, and attempting to sum up the director's achievement, called Russell "somebody who proved that British cinema didn't have to be about kitchen-sink realism-it could be every bit as flamboyant as Fellini. Russell also directed several films based on the lives of classical music composers, such as Elgar, Delius, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, and Liszt. Russell is best known for his Oscar-winning film Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), The Who's Tommy (1975), and the science fiction film Altered States (1980). He also directed many feature films independently and for studios. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. His films in the main were liberal adaptations of existing texts, or biographies, notably of composers of the Romantic era. Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell (3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011) was a British film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style.
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