Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video:

Audio:

• Michael Bradsell Interview (2015, 10:04): the film editor talks about working with Ken Russell
• Land of Hope and Glory (1931, 3:20): footage of Sir Edward Elgar conducting the LSO at the opening of the new HMV Studios (now Abbey Road Studios)
• Elgar and the Three Choirs Festival (Harold Brooke, 1929-1932, 9:19): amateur footage of Elgar at home and at the Three Choirs Festival
• Ken Russell and Michael Kennedy audio commentary for Elgar (2002)
• Newly commissioned commentary by Kevin Flanagan for The Debussy Film
• Ken Russell audio commentary for Song of Summer (2002)
• Illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Kevin Flanagan, John Hill, John C Tibbetts, Paul Sutton and Michael Brooke, and full credits
DVD (Dual-Format)

Bitrates:

Elgar

 

The Debussy Film

 

Song of Summer

 

 

Description: A Dual Format Edition collection bringing together the career defining work of Ken Russell at the BBC. Russell's work during the sixties for award-winning arts documentary series Monitor and Omnibus were critically-acclaimed and often seen as a high point in his filmmaking.

The first of the three films, Elgar (1962), portrays in vigorous style the life of the English composer Sir Edward Elgar, with Huw Wheldon narrating his life story over beautiful mountain scenery. The Debussy Film (1965), Russell's penultimate film for Monitor was an ambitious work about the composer's life, written by Melvyn Bragg and starring Oliver Reed as Claude Debussy. Song of Summer (1968) is generally regarded (not least by its director) as Russell's best television film with many critics citing it as his finest work in any medium. The story traces Eric Fenby and is based on his memoirs of trying to help the blind and paralysed composer Frederick Delius.

The films in this collection have been remastered to High Definition, and are presented on Blu-ray for the very first time.

 

 

 

 

Elgar
Elgar was made under a series of Wheldon-imposed restrictions, notably a ban on dramatisations of the lives of real people. Russell agreed a compromise: although Elgar and his contemporaries would be portrayed by actors, they would never speak and would mostly be filmed in long shot. Russell exploited these limitations brilliantly, the absence of dialogue letting him fill the soundtrack with almost wall-to-wall Elgar, including pieces that had rarely been heard since their composition. Wheldon himself contributed the relatively sparse narration, but the film's true eloquence comes from the fusion of Elgar's music and Russell's images.

Given the film's lowly origins, its visual fluidity is remarkable: this couldn't be further removed from a dry historical lecture. When Russell's camera isn't swooping and gliding over Elgar's beloved Malvern Hills, it's fixating on strangely arresting shots: the sequence covering Lady Elgar's death begins with tendrils of mist snaking through a silver birch wood, continues with a dark room full of mysteriously shrouded furniture and ends with the bereaved Elgar's new and obsessive interest in microscopic natural phenomena. Most television dates rapidly, but over forty years on, Elgar is still startlingly fresh and inventive. Even the black-and-white photography looks like a deliberate artistic choice as opposed to a then-universal convention.

The Debussy Film
The film operates on, and constantly switches between, three levels. First, there's the dramatised life story of Debussy and his stormy relationships with lovers, friends, colleagues and patrons. Then, there are visualisations of his music, along similar lines to those in Elgar (BBC, tx. 11/11/1962) and Béla Bartók (BBC, tx. 24/5/1964), beginning with a startling sequence in which a young woman, representing Saint Sebastian, is shot at point-blank range with arrows. And finally, there's the film within The Debussy Film, as an ambitious director attempts to capture the complexities of his subject while negotiating his actors' own turbulent relationships.

Although this treatment might seem gimmicky, it represents the logical culmination of Russell's Monitor output. In constantly pushing at the boundaries of what was considered acceptable for a BBC documentary, he had to spend much time thinking about what he was attempting, not least in order to justify it to his boss Huw Wheldon, a stickler for factual accuracy. His director frequently voices these dilemmas, musing about how to convey particular ideas on film, incorporate additional material without unbalancing the narrative, or simply to vouch for the accuracy of individual scenes. Russell confirmed that the line "They did play with balloons - I checked" was a cheeky dig at Wheldon.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

Elgar

The Debussy Film

 

 

 

 

Audio :

Like The Great Passions - this package also has many supplements including commentaries for each film (Ken Russell and Michael Kennedy for Elgar and Russell for Song of Summer - both from 2002 - and a delightful newly commissioned commentary by Kevin Flanagan for The Debussy Film) plus another new (2015) 10-minute interview with Michael Bradsell; the film editor talks about working with Ken Russell. We get a short piece of footage from 1931 of Sir Edward Elgar conducting the LSO at the opening of the new HMV Studios (now Abbey Road Studios), as well as amateur footage of Elgar at home and at the Three Choirs Festival. There is an Illustrated booklet featuring new essays by Kevin Flanagan, John Hill, John C Tibbetts, Paul Sutton and Michael Brooke, and full credits and the release is dual-format with a DVD included.

BOTTOM LINE:
The Ken Russell Collections: are superb - a brilliant idea by the BFI. These are can really represent a landmark in exposing less-exposed culture/art with Russell's unique explorations they are so dissimilar to mainstream  - and we, again, get three of them on one Blu-ray! The a/v quality exceeds The Great Passions set (although similar era video but the music, in lossless, is an integral part of these three productions) and we also get immense value in the extras as well as, simply getting access to the films in HD (which is huge, IMO). I thoroughly enjoyed watching these again - such fascinating beauty and higher resolution helps impact you on a deeper level. Of the two Ken Russell Collections - I lean to this a bit more but both are very strongly recommended!  

Gary Tooze

March 12th, 2016