paulellissutton

This is an appallingly inept film made by a production team who did not respect or even understand the source novel. It is a book about hate and poverty and pain. The whole point of the novel is that the mother corrupts the boy into being as slyly evil as she is. The director plays this as comedy! complete with dropped trouser gags, crass blue lighting, and ubiquitous crashes of thunder to complete the farce. The whole is completely miscast by a team of poor players who have the subtlety of sledgehammers. The film is full of crass moments which aren't in the book, such as the dreadful wink-wink wraparound. The ending has been changed! and made happy! Watch instead the 1971 version, which is true to the spirit and the themes of the original novel, with perfect settings and a magnificent cast, playing with the right amount of seething resentment and ripening rage. The only flaw with the 1971 film is that it is too short.

This film topped the British box-office for two weeks and in doing so made Ken Russell the most successful filmmaker in Britain in the 1970s. It was his fifth No.1 hit in that decade. Guy Hamilton had four No.1s (Bond films), Sam Peckinpah had three No.1s; no one else had more than two. Ken Russell also spent longer at Number one than Spielberg, whose two No.1 hits, Jaws and Close Encounters, failed to match the record set by The Music Lovers (1 week at No. 1); Devils (Eight Weeks at No.1); Tommy (14 weeks); Lisztomania (2 weeks) and this. Valentino is not one of Russell's masterpieces, but there are mightily glorious things to see here.

It seems that camcorder cinema is here to stay, so Ken Russell has made a film with his camcorder that re-writes all the 'Dogma' rules; an astonishingly inventive, powerful, rude, gory, inspired and funny film, full of colour. Some of the acting is a little too large for my liking, not least from Ken himself as the keeper of an asylum asked to take charge of a rock singer who may or may not have murdered his wife. It ends with the Usher family being reborn as the ghosts of mischievous children, and a Fall of the House of Usher staged with such wit and imagination I almost fainted with astonishment and laughter. A midnight movie classic!