The Ken Russell Collection

[djproject]

I actually went to school with Kevin Flanagan back in the day (wm.edu)

[tenia]

I'm reading it will be encoded in 1080i50. Are these another case of "shot on film but at 25fps because it was for TV" like the Alan Clarke movies ?

[criterion10]

I'm reading it will be encoded in 1080i50.

Fuck, you're right! Ugh, this is frustrating. Thankfully, this *is* dual-format: I have a region free DVD player that handles PAL-to-NTSC conversions no problem, but I'm just been using a remote hack on my Region "A" Panasonic Blu-Ray player (looks like this might be the time to finally buy a proper Region Free one).

Just to clarify: As long as I buy a Region Free Blu-Ray player that can handle the frame conversion (i.e. 50 to 60), I'll be good to go, right? (I remember buying my DVD Player from Bombay Electronics, an they had some good Blu-Ray options as well).

[MichaelB]

I'm reading it will be encoded in 1080i50. Are these another case of "shot on film but at 25fps because it was for TV" like the Alan Clarke movies ?

Yes. And because they're heavily music-oriented (even the non-composer biopics), it obviously made sense to run them at the correct speed (and pitch).

Which is why, for once, the PAL DVDs won't suffer from the usual speedup issues.

[criterion10]

Beaver on Valentino

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced for the BBC volumes:

Ken Russell The Great Composers
Elgar; The Debussy Film; Song of Summer

These astonishing documentaries, by ground-breaking director Ken Russell (Valentino, The Devils) were originally broadcast in the BBC TV arts documentary strands Monitor and Omnibus during the 1960s. On 28 March 2016 they will be released together on DVD and Blu-ray in a Dual Format Edition by the BFI.

Each film has an audio commentary, and in a new filmed interview, film editor Michael Bradsell talks about working with Ken Russell. Also included is rarely-seen archival footage of Sir Edward Elgar.

Elgar (1962), Russell’s tribute to the music he loved, is remarkable for its sensitive portrayal of the rise of a young musician from an underprivileged background to international fame. The Debussy Film (1965), co-written by Melvyn Bragg, is a truly experimental work that culminates in a sublimely ethereal finale. Perhaps the finest of Russell’s 1960s biographical BBC productions, Song of Summer (1968) is an immensely moving story of sacrifice, idealism and musical genius which charts the final five years in the life of Frederick Delius.

Special features
• Newly remastered and presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition
• Land of Hope and Glory (1931, 3 mins): footage of Sir Edward Elgar conducting the LSO at the opening of the new HMV (now Abbey Road) studios
• Elgar and the Three Choirs Festival (Harold Brooke, 1929-1932, 9 mins): amateur footage of Elgar at home and at the Three Choirs Festival
• Michael Bradsell Interview (2015, 10 mins): the film editor talks about working with Ken Russell
• Ken Russell and Michael Kennedy audio commentary for Elgar (2002)
• Newly commissioned commentary by Kevin M Flanagan for The Debussy Film
• Ken Russell audio commentary for Song of Summer (2002)
• 30-page illustrated booklet with new essays by Kevin M Flanagan, John Hill, John C Tibbetts, Paul Sutton and Michael Brooke, and full film credits

Product details
RRP: £29.99/ Cat. no. BFIB1244 / Cert 12 / 3-disc set
UK / 1962 + 1965 + 1968 / black and white / English, with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / 56 mins + 82 mins + 73 mins / original aspect ratio 1.33:1
1 x BD50: 1080/50i, LPCM 2.0 audio (48kHz/16-bit) / 2 x DVD9: PAL, 25fps, Dolby Digital 2.0 audio (320kbps)

Ken Russell The Great Passions
Always on Sunday; Isadora; Dante’s Inferno

These three spectacular documentaries by controversial director Ken Russell (Valentino, The Devils) were originally broadcast in the BBC TV arts documentary strands Monitor and Omnibus in the 1960s.

On 28 March 2016 they will be released together on DVD and Blu-ray in a Dual Format Edition by the BFI. Among the many extras, each film has an audio commentary, and in a new interview, film editor Michael Bradsell talks about working with Ken Russell.

Always on Sunday (1965), a dramatised exploration of the naif painter Henri Rousseau, sees Russell reunited with Melvyn Bragg and Oliver Reed in one of his most charming and delightful documentaries. Isadora (1966), Russell’s exuberant study of the outrageous American dancer Isadora Duncan, is probably the film that best encapsulates the director’s attitude to art and creativity. In Dante's Inferno (1967) Oliver Reed gives a smouldering performance as the Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This startling and bold film is one of the most ambitious that Russell made for the BBC.

Special features
• Newly remastered and presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition
• Late Night Line-Up: Russell at Work (Ian Keill, 1966, 31 mins): documentary shot during the making of Isadora
• Michael Bradsell Interview (2015, 18 mins): the film editor talks about working with Ken Russell
• Brian Hoyle audio commentary for Always on Sunday
• Paul Sutton audio commentary for Isadora
• Brian Hoyle audio commentary for Dante’s Inferno
• The Paul Sutton Tapes: alternative audio track to Isadora, comprising interviews which Paul Sutton conducted with the cast and crew between 2008 and 2012
• 30-page illustrated booklet featuring new essays by John Wyver, Kevin Jackson, Christophe Van Eecke, Brian Hoyle, Paul Sutton and Michael Brooke, and full credits

Product details
RRP: £29.99 / Cat. no. BFIB1245 / Cert 12 / 3-disc set
UK / 1965 + 1966 + 1967 / black and white / English, with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / 45 mins + 64 mins + 88 mins / original aspect ratio 1.33:1
1 x BD50: 1080/50i, LPCM 2.0 mono audio (48kHz/16-bit) / 2 x DVD9: PAL, 25fps, Dolby Digital 2.0 audio (320kbps)

North American would-be purchasers should note the fact that these are in 1080i50, a reflection of the fact that all these were originally shot at 25fps, and it's the best way of maintaining the correct speed (and pitch). (Although technically interlaced, the image will in fact be fully progressive.)

And as a further footnote, five out of six films have been sourced from the original 35mm negatives (Always on Sunday was shot on 16mm), so they should look spectacular on BD.

[manicsounds]

DVDBeaver on The Great Composers set
DVDBeaver on The Great Passions set

[manicsounds]

Mondo Digital, though mostly on the films rather than the tech aspects.

[MichaelB]

I'd have thought this was eloquent enough:

All three titles look excellent (correctly presented at 25fps as originally shot; there's no speed up) and zoom way past the older SD masters we've had for way over a decade (not to mention the terrible, stuttery PAL conversion on the American set), getting sharper and more vivid as they go with Song of Summer looking especially deep and rich. The LPCM 2.0 mono audio sounds great for all three, and optional English subtitles are provided.

[Davy Gallagher]

I don't have the two collections yet but did pick up Valentino which I loved deeply. Is there any chance of more Russell on bluray from the BFI? I think we all know the Devils issues but are there other gems we could see? It would be great to have a fair few releases for him akin to the Cassavetes collection or the Pasolini releases.

[manicsounds]

Russell directed quite a few episodes of "Monitor" and "Omnibus" which would be great for future releases if possible. Have any other episodes been released on DVD previously besides the 6 on the BFI Blu-ray sets? I know the "Richard Strauss" episode won't be available for general release until the music copyright expires in 2019, so that would be something to look forward to in 3 years.

By the way, "Song of Summer" has been slightly changed from the original broadcast:
Rewind DVDCompare review

It should be noted that the original broadcast version of “Song of Summer” had clips of the Laurel and Hardy film “Way Out West”, but due to copyright reasons they have been replaced with scenes from the film “What Next?” directed by and starring Walter Forde. It also corrects an anachronism, as the scene supposedly took place in 1928, the year “What Next?” was released, while “Way Out West” was from 1937, a full 8 years after Laurel and Hardy started making their first talkie films.

[Jonathan S]

By the way, "Song of Summer" has been slightly changed from the original broadcast:
Rewind DVDCompare review

It should be noted that the original broadcast version of “Song of Summer” had clips of the Laurel and Hardy film “Way Out West”, but due to copyright reasons they have been replaced with scenes from the film “What Next?” directed by and starring Walter Forde. It also corrects an anachronism, as the scene supposedly took place in 1928, the year “What Next?” was released, while “Way Out West” was from 1937, a full 8 years after Laurel and Hardy started making their first talkie films.

Yes, I brought this up in 2012; the Way Out West clip was deleted from previous DVD releases and more recent BBC repeats, as discussed here. But at least Russell's opening is now reinstated with a different clip, instead of being completely eliminated.

[MichaelB]

Russell directed quite a few episodes of "Monitor" and "Omnibus" which would be great for future releases if possible. Have any other episodes been released on DVD previously besides the 6 on the BFI Blu-ray sets? I know the "Richard Strauss" episode won't be available for general release until the music copyright expires in 2019, so that would be something to look forward to in 3 years.

These two releases comprise the bulk of the feature-length pieces from 1959-70. Three others are Pop Goes the Easel (1962), which is on the Visions of Change DVD, Dance of the Seven Veils (1970), which is legally unreleasable until New Year's Day 2020, and Béla Bartók (1964), which I suspect is a rights minefield because of the volume of third-party footage that it contains. (A great shame, as it's one of my favourites, and there's a tantalising clip in the Late Night Line-Up documentary.)

The other Monitor items are typically 10-15 minutes apiece and mostly made between 1959 and 1963. Antoní Gaudí (1961) was included on Criterion's edition of the Teshigahara film - are there any others out there?

By the way, "Song of Summer" has been slightly changed from the original broadcast:

...as mentioned two months earlier in this very thread.

It's by far the most sensible thing they could have done under the circumstances, and obviously miles better than just chopping out the original opening altogether, which is what both the previous DVD releases did.

[manicsounds]

I don't know how I missed that.... I guess I just skimmed and wasnt paying attention.

So the previous BBC US and BFI UK DVD releases had the opening cut entirely?

[MichaelB]

Yes.

[manicsounds]

DVDCompare review of "The Great Passions"

Mastering error?

Another note on “Dante’s Inferno” - there seems to be a mastering error: at the 34:50 mark, the image shifts down completely for a single frame. This doesn’t look like something inherent to the original film and possibly an error in the new HD master. This only lasts for a single frame and nothing like it happens for the rest of the film. The BFI has been notified about it and the review will be updated when an answer is received.

[M Sanderson]

Probably my two favourite Blu ray releases. My favourites being with Oliver Reed in the lead for The Debussy Film and Dante's Inferno. They are just so dense, exciting cinematically and rich in tone; they can be light, can be heavy going, and you just don't know what kind of mood they'll careen to next. Russell's montage and cinematography are completely up to expressing these shifts from such styles as bawdy farce and broad comedy to tragedy and morbid, gothic horror. Stunning transfers of films with such unbelievable energy. All the six films in fact are crucial, all rhyming and echoing one another - and Russell's theatrical films - in exciting and unexpected ways.

I always wanted to see a 2002 (I believe) version of the Sunday Painter with Paddy Considine, by Russell.

And the 1978 documentaries William and Dorothy and Rime of the Ancient Mariner, you'd hope one day someone would do something with these.

So the Strauss film could find its way to Blu ray in a few years? Russell is our most suppressed filmmaker so this would be a crucial release.

[MichaelB]

So the Strauss film could find its way to Blu ray in a few years? Russell is our most suppressed filmmaker so this would be a crucial release.

There's no good reason why not - there's almost certainly a market for it, the BFI has a pretty decent print (with far better colour than the barely watchable timecoded copy on YouTube), and the only thing preventing a release right now is the Richard Strauss Estate, whose control over the music expires at midnight on January 1st 2020 (i.e. the first day of the year after the 70th anniversary of the composer's death, in accordance with current European copyright law).

But the one I'd really love to see on Blu-ray is Béla Bartók (1964), which I think is my favourite of all the 1960s Ken Russell BBC productions. Granted, this is partly due to inherent musical bias (I've been a total Bartók nut ever since my admirably adventurous piano teacher first introduced me to his music at the age of nine), but Russell's film has some absolutely stunning sequences, notably the "night-music" one. You can see a brief, tantalising excerpt from it in the Late Night Line-Up doc on one of the BFI discs. But I strongly suspect that this fell victim to rather more complicated rights issues - much of the footage is owned by third parties (Russell never went anywhere near Hungary, unsurprisingly), although at least Bartók's music itself came out of copyright a year ago.

[Orlac]

I love how Bartok appears in both Doctor Who and The Shining. Marvellous composer!

[M Sanderson]

I look forward to it.

Meanwhile someone needs to do something with Gothic.

Might catch up with Lair of the White Worm on iTunes, hoping their digital copy is better than the "HD" download of Gothic I tried on Amazon Video, which looks like a VHS tape copied several generations.

And the peak Russells like Music Lovers, Boy Friend, Savage Messiah and Mahler - I hope to see these trickle through in to Blu ray in the next few years.

[MichaelB]

Arrow tried to pick up Gothic for a summer 2016 release (for obvious reasons), but the rights proved intractable. Mainly because in order to justify the expense of a restoration - which, as you say, is pretty much essential - they'd need to clear both the UK and US rights, which are with different companies, and one of them is Lionsgate.

[Cronenfly]

Lair of the White Worm is forthcoming on Blu from Lionsgate, which I hope leads to the rest of his Vestron output going HD, Gothic included. Kind of surprised Arrow did not pick up some Russell when they licensed Shivers/Rabid/Bound for the UK from Lionsgate, perhaps there were some rights and/or elements issues with the titles Lionsgate controls in the UK?

[MichaelB]

Gothic was a Virgin Films production, not Vestron.

And as I hinted above, picking up UK-only rights to titles that aren't likely to be major sellers generally means that good-quality HD masters need to be available off the shelf.

[Cronenfly]

Vestron is listed on Gothic's IMDB page, along with Virgin (maybe it was a pickup by Vestron, at least in the US?). I know it is with (or at least has been released by) MGM in the UK and Lionsgate in the US, don't know about the other three Vestrons (The Rainbow, Salome, Lair; reasonably sure all three are Lionsgate in the US, not so sure about the UK). So I guess US releases from Lionsgate (via the Vestron label or otherwise) are the best hope for these, since I doubt any of these meets the off-the-shelf HD requirement you cite (other than Lair, which seems to have had some kind of HD bootleg put out online, and which I am guessing is in the best condition if it is the one Lionsgate is leading with).

[M Sanderson]

Arrow tried to pick up Gothic for a summer 2016 release (for obvious reasons), but the rights proved intractable. Mainly because in order to justify the expense of a restoration - which, as you say, is pretty much essential - they'd need to clear both the UK and US rights, which are with different companies, and one of them is Lionsgate.

Yes I remember you saying on Arrow's Facebook page. Glad they looked into it following a wave of very positive releases of Ken Russell's works on Blu ray and hope someone else can give it the level of attention typical of Arrow. Russell's works do seem to be in a constant state of reevaluation - not seen much positive writing on the mid-late '80s fare (Crimes of Passion notwithstanding) other than Linda Ruth Williams' work in Sight & Sound, in which Gothic receives some deserved praise - so maybe it's time...