Watch Order
0 / 10 watchedTen features in release order.
About Ken Russell
Ken Russell came from BBC arts documentaries and broke through with Women in Love in 1969, with its famous nude wrestling scene. The Devils in 1971, The Boy Friend in 1971 and Savage Messiah in 1972 confirmed a taste for spectacle that critics loved to fight about. Mahler in 1974 began a run of composer portraits, then Tommy in 1975 and Lisztomania in 1975 turned The Who and classical music into hallucinatory musicals.
Valentino in 1977 with Rudolf Nureyev flopped, and Altered States in 1980 took Russell to Hollywood for a trip he later disowned. Crimes of Passion in 1984 closed this selection in erotic thriller territory. The films never share continuity, so release order just shows the budgets rising and falling around a style that never calmed down. Russell died in 2011.
Good to know
Russell directed dozens of television films before and between these, including celebrated BBC portraits of Elgar and Debussy, which this movie order skips. The Devils exists in several cuts, with the longest restorations still disputed, so expect version confusion. Tommy works as a concert film first and a story second. This order is complete as selected, since Russell died in 2011.
