British director Ken Russell dies

LONDON -- Ken Russell, an iconoclastic British director whose daring films combined music, sex and violence in the potent brew apparently attracted directly from his subconscious, has died at 84. Russell died in the hospital on Sunday following numerous strokes, his boy Alex Verney-Elliott mentioned Monday. "My father died silently," Verney-Elliott mentioned. "He died getting a grin on his face." Russell will be a very original director whose vision every so often introduced mainstream success, but frequently examined the persistence of audiences and experts. He'd among his finest hits in 1969 with "Women for one another,Inch good book by D.H. Lawrence, which acquired Academy Award nominations for your director too for author Ray Kramer, together with a "Best Actress" Oscar for your star, Glenda Jackson. It incorporated one of the decade's most well-known moments -- a nude wrestling bout between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed. Reed mentioned in those days the director was "starting to visit crazy." "Before he will be a sane, enjoyable TV director," Reed mentioned. "Now he's a wild, enjoyable film director." Born inside the British port of Southampton in 1927, Russell was attracted with the romance in the sea and attended Pangbourne Maritime College before joining the Merchant Navy at 17 just like a junior crew member around the cargo ship bound for your Off-shoreline. He increased being seasick, soon recognized he hated naval existence and was launched carrying out a nervous breakdown. Wanting to avoid joining the household's shoe business, he examined ballet and attempted his hands at acting before accepting he wasn't much effective in either. He then examined photography, he did have a very talent, and increased to become way digital digital photographer just before being hired to use on BBC arts programs, including profiles in the poet John Betjeman, comedian Spike Milligan and playwright Shelagh Delaney. "When there has been ignore live artists left, we switched to making somewhat longer films about dead artists for instance Prokofiev," Russell once mentioned. These quickly developed from conventional documentaries into some factor interesting. "At first i had been only allowed to take advantage of still photographs and newsreel footage of individuals subjects, but eventually we sneaked inside the odd hands playing the piano (in 'Prokofiev') as well as the odd back walking using a door," Russell mentioned. "Whenever a couple of years had went by, people boring little factual accounts in the artists acquired into evocative films from the hour or maybe more which used real stars to impersonate the historic figures." Music carried out a central role in several of Russell's films, including "The Music Activity Fanatics" in 1970 -- about Tchaikovsky -- and 1975's "Lisztomania," which starred Roger Daltrey in the Who as 19th-century heartthrob Franz Liszt. "The Boy Friend," a 1971 homage to 19 thirties Hollywood musicals starring supermodel Twiggy, and Russell's 1975 adaptation in the Who's psychedelic rock opera "Tommy," were musicals from the different sort, both marked with the director's characteristic visual excess. Russell's deeper side was rarely far. "Dante's Inferno," a 1967 movie in regards to the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, carried out within the versions between Rossetti's idealized take a look at his wife and her reality just like a drug abuser. Russell being more provocative within the 1970 film "The Dance in the Seven Veils: A Comic Strip in Seven Episodes." It presented the composer Richard Strauss just like a crypto-Nazi, and shown him carrying out Rosenkavalier waltzes while SS males tortured a Jew. "The Devils," a 1971 film starring Vanessa Redgrave just like a 17th-century nun inside the grip of demonic possession, was heavily cut due to its U.S. release which is due to be released on DVD in the uk the first time in 2012. Russell told The Connected Press later he found such censorship "so tedious and boring." He referred to as American print of "The Devils" ''just a butchered nonsense." Experts were frequently not astounded by Russell's work. Alexander Master referred to as him a specialist of "the porno-biography that's under pornography but is definately not being biography." Pauline Kael mentioned his films "cheapen everything they touch." But enthusiasts luxuriated within the Medieval sensibility -- displayed once again in "Medieval," a 1987 film in regards to the genesis of Mary Shelley's horror tale "Frankenstein" replete together with your hallucinatory pictures as breasts with eyes and mouths spewing cockroaches. Russell mentioned his depiction from the drug-addled Percy Bysshe Shelley would be a precise depiction of occasions. "Everyone in England inside the 1800s was around the permanent trip. She must are actually stoned from his mind for any very long time,Inch Russell mentioned. "I realize I am.Inch Russell's adoration for changing mental states also made an appearance in 1980 film "Transformed States," an infrequent Hollywood foray for him, starring William Hurt just like a investigator experimentation with hallucinogens. It absolutely was poorly received. Later films incorporated the comic horror thriller "The Lair in the White-colored Earthworm" in 1989, which gave an atypical early role to Hugh Grant just like a vampire earthworm-fighting master in the manor. Russell also directed operas making it for Elton John's "Nikita." Married four occasions, Russell is managed to get by his wife Elise Tribble and also the children. Funeral particulars were not immediately introduced. Contact the number newsroom at news@variety.com