John Betjeman: A Poet in London
The film was Ken Russell's first for television and was commissioned by Huw Wheldon, the head of the BBC's Monitor arts programme. Betjeman is shown visiting locations including Vauxhall Park, Aldersgate Street station (now the Barbican), Camden Town and Hatfield. He recites his poems 'Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station', 'Business Girls', 'The Olympic Girl' and 'Hertfordshire'.
Ken Russell
Director
Also Directed by Ken Russell
Ken Russell revisits the life of Elgar, with musical background provided by the composer's works.
Trapped in a house of horror, seven people discover that the only way they'll get out alive is to tell their scariest stories.
Rock star Roddy Usher's wife is murdered and Rod is sent to a lunatic asylum in this gothic-comedy-horror-musical.
A biopic about the eminent composer Sir Arnold Bax.
This melodrama investigates the life of a sex worker, in a pseudo-documentary style.
A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from native American shamans, he explores these altered states of consciousness and finds that memory, time, and perhaps reality itself are states of mind.
Ken Russell's rather loose adaptation of the last part of D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow" sees impulsive young Ursula coming of age in pastoral England around the time of the Boer War. At school, she is introduced to lovemaking by a bisexual physical education instructress. While experiencing disillusionment in her first career attempt (teaching), she has an affair with a young Army officer, who wants to marry her. Unable to accept a future of domesticity, she breaks with him, and eventually leaves home in search of her destiny.
Composer and pianist Franz Liszt attempts to overcome his hedonistic life-style while repeatedly being drawn back into it by the many women in his life and fellow composer Richard Wagner.
A partly dramatised account of the life of Sir Edward Elgar classical composer. Huw Wheldon narrates the life story over backdrops of beautiful mountain scenery, especially memorable is the image of young Elgar riding his horse around Malvern Hills.
A young girl (Amelia) is distressed and feeling guilty about losing the wings she was to wear in her school play. Then she notices an angel and follows the angel into a dark building. Upstairs in the attic, bathed in heavenly light, is an artist's model - the ANGEL. The painter ascends a ladder until he is out of shot - supposedly to heaven-and reappears to restore Amelia's joy with a pair of wings.
