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Moving from music to sculpture Russell comes up with Savage Messiah, one of his cult masterpieces about Henri Gaudier in 1972. The film was largely self-financed by Russell which made its commercial failure a particular blow. Gaudier meets the much older and prim Sophie Brzeska- she says "If only we had met 20 years ago". She has an ordered mind, compared with Gaudier's spontaneity.
They develop a friendship leading to them sharing names (Gaudier Brzeska) though they never married. " I am your brother... I am your sister". "Sophie, who was almost twenty years older than Henri, only agreed to live with him on condition they avoided sex... she became a surrogate mother to the iutense and excitable adolescent... Although he claimed that his relationship was platonic, Gaudier's work is often charged with a highly erotic awareness of the human body" (Wild Thing, Richard Cox, 2010, Royal Academy of Arts, chapter 5) Ken Russell's imagery is as always breathtaking.
Gaudier in the rain looking through the art gallery window, and a dancer in the Vortex Club. Gaudier was one of the Vorticists along with Ezra Pound and Wyndam Lewis.
In one of Russell's best scenes Brzeska waits for Gaudier at a station.
The train comes and goes but no Gaudier. Another train leaves and there is Gaudier on the wrong platform, arms full of roses for Brzeska. He runs towards her, jumping from platform to rails. He slips as a train emerges but rather than escape the train he picks up the roses, at the last moment avoiding the wheels of the train and falling into Brzeskaīs arms.
Gaudier joins the war. The superb line "I have succeeded in making the enemy angry..." is from a letter quoted in H.S. Edeīs biography of Gaudier. Sophie wrote "Before leaving for the front- he gave me all his works- drawings- tools- furniture- in fact all he possessed. After eight months spent in the trenches - he was killed on the 5th June 1915. In my great grief all material possessions were indifferent to me- I wished and longed for death myself" (Matka and other writings, Sophie Gaudier-Brzesa, Mercury Graphics London, 2008, chapter 4). The film ends, just as Edeīs book does, with Gaudierīs work. Dorothy Parker says "Recommendations seem to me always impudent: but perhaps I know you well enough to ask a favor of you. Please, will you put down whatever that thing is that you're doing and read Savage Messiah [the book]? It is no fun, but, if only for the letters it contains, it is a great book. And you don't get "great" out of me for red apples" (Dorothy Parker, Two Lives and Some letters, 14 March 1931, included in The Collected Dorothy Parker).
Russell also says (Films and Filming Oct 1972) "I wanted this film to be totally different from the big companies and back into the small studio, back to the BBC sort of style with a small unit".
"In a scene that burns itself on the brain, Helen Mirren, as Gosh, descends a staircase of magnificent Jarmanesque grandeur. It is perhaps the finest nude scene in film history" (Chris in Eye for Eye here). Alex Russell, Ken's son, who plays a small role in the film, says "On Savage Messiah, I remember when filming on the sea coast some oil or tar was on the lens of the 35ml camera; but was not discovered till the evenings rushes screening: so a whole days shooting was ruined! Also: the rain scene was done via the fire brigade pumping salt water straight from the sea! Also: the Gaudier Breshka charcoal and pastel drawings (well faked) for the film were later stolen and sold as originals down Bond Street and at Sotheby's!" In the film Gaudier says "If people can't tell the difference between a genuine Gaudier and a genuine Gainsbrough they deserve to be cheated. One day someone will be forging my work". One review states "Although the performances are full of hysteria, "Savage Messiah" is so tame that it almost makes one long for the excesses of the earlier Russell films, which so overwhelmed the senses as to become anesthetically soothing, like loud rock. At one point in the film, I had the feeling that perhaps Russell was really taking stock of his career to date." (Vincent Canby, New York Times, 9 Nov 1972).
Compare with:
"... Russell presents a sharply etched portrait of the bohemian community of opportunistic dealers and arty types who like Gaudier better than the vulgar woman. The convincing atmosphere of pre-war France is presented with Russell's eye for careful compositions in wide-angle lenses mixed with exuberant moving camerawork and flashy cutting. So much of this is pure Russell, such as a shot of the naked Helen Mirren (as a spoilt aristocratic turned bomb-throwing suffragist) posed in the middle of a lavish set designed by Derek Jarman. One of the most remarkable sequences shows Gaudier carving a marble sculpture, uttering various observations while he chips and chisels. All at once, we see a serious artist at work. The final sequence is a dazzling parade of some of the museum pieces he left behind, that we can finally understand how this cliched "artistic temperament" got around to producing something real." (Michael Barrett, 6 May 2011, Pop Matters here).
"There's no such think as an artist who doesn't need an audience"
All images from the film or posters. |
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