The Biggest Film Biographer in the World

The Biggest Film Biographer in the World: The Films of Ken Russell is a study of Ken Russell's film work from his early days at the BBC in the 1960's to his later, sometimes controversial, independent work covering his whole career until Boudica Bites Back his final film from 2009. The book explores his films in depth, with close readings of early black & white works such as Pop Goes the Easel, Dante's Inferno and Elgar to later color films such as Dance of the Seven Veils: a Comic Strip in 7 Episodes on the Life of Richard Strauss, The Devils and Mahler. The book also contains an expansive introduction that summarizes Russell's biography, explains Russell's working method, introduces the main themes of the work and lays out the various periods in his vast filmography that includes operas and music videos. The main body of the book concentrates on Russell's obsessive fascination with artists, composers, dancers and poets and how those biographies, starting in the 1960's, transformed the way we think of the biographical film. Russell's whole body of work was informed by a second Renaissance that took place in England in the 1960's and the book explores that time/place and the context in which the films came into being.