[Even] Russell's bitterest enemies would not deny that he has his own distinctive vision. His baroque visual effects are easily identifiable…. Characters and episodes from one film are re-interpreted later….

These relatively simple connecting links point to a more comprehensive thematic unity. Many of Russell's obsessions can be traced to his television films. One of the quintessential Russell images appears in Dante's Inferno, his film on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, when the poet, who has buried a volume of poetry with his first wife, goes to dig up the coffin and retrieve the poems—art snatched (quite literally) from the jaws of death. Russell is haunted by images of physical and mental disintegration; the tension between art and death accounts for much of the dramatic power of his films….

Although Russell sympathizes with the struggle to transcend death, he wants to expose the artist's ruthlessness in pursuing his vision. In his eloquent television film Song of Summer, focusing on the relationship of Frederick Delius and Eric Fenby, a young music student who comes to transcribe his last works, Russell introduces another of his major themes: the sacrifice of a weaker individual to the over-weening ego of the artist….

Russell's investigation of the moral failure of the artist is a major theme of his work, a theme explored most caustically in Lisztomania. The films of Russell that do not deal primarily with artists—Billion Dollar Brain, The Boy Friend, Tommy, even Women in Love—seem less characteristic, less urgent. The Devils occupies a more important position, partly because of its Catholic theme (Russell is a convert to Catholicism), but also because the radical priest, Grandier, is a heroic, tormented figure involved in the same kind of agonized struggle against death as the artist. Although The Devils has a stronger political subtext than most of Russell's films, he has very little interest in social and political issues, and that helps to explain what is missing from his striking but unsatisfying Women in Love. Russell does not begin to understand Lawrence's profoundly comprehensive vision of the Industrial Revolution and the class struggle; the images of poverty (like Gerald's white limousine moving through a line of blackened miners) are beautiful composed, but without the undercurrent of compassion and rage that animated the novel. (p. 41)

[The Music Lovers] is a pointed study of the decay of the nineteenth-century romanticism. At times the sensuous images and the soaring music reflect the breathtaking boldness and confidence of Tchaikovsky's aspirations, but there is usually a tinge of irony qualifying the composer's rapture. The images of idyllic family life that accompany the First Piano Concerto are luxurious, yet deliberately overripe…. Although precariously balanced between beauty and decay, romance and sexual nightmare, The Music Lovers ends with a harsh nihilistic vision of the triumph of chaos.

The Music Lovers feels like an exorcism of Russell's own fears. Savage Messiah is a sunnier companion piece, a more wholehearted tribute to the adventurousness of the romantic artist. It contains many of the same tensions as The Music Lovers, but it is a more jubilant work, with only a few muted reminders of the artist's delusions. (pp. 41-2)

Yet there are a few darker intimations even in this film. Russell cannot help observing that the same recklessness that fires Gaudier's art drives him to his death on the battle-field; his passion has its self-destructive side. The ending of the film is disturbingly ambivalent. At a posthumous exhibition of Gaudier's work, the smooth, gliding camera movements capture the beauty of the sculptures. In an earlier scene Gaudier said that art could not exist without an audience; yet the audience at his exhibition consists mainly of dilettantes who are titillated by his daring. The ending is a rousing tribute to Gaudier's art, shadowed by a nagging, barely perceptible sense of futility.

This ambiguous conclusion does not dispel the exuberant mood of Savage Messiah, but it suggests that Russell's vision of artistic fulfillment is always double-edged; he has a romantic spirit clouded by a sneaking sense of irony. Nevertheless, Savage Messiah is Russell's most relaxed and affectionate film, and possibly his best—less sensational, more evenhanded, mellow, and mature than anything else he has done in features….

Mahler … is conceived almost like a burlesque tour of some high points of the composer's life….

In Mahler Russell reduces plot to a minimum and develops an unorthodox surrealist style…. (p. 42)

Mahler does not have the dramatic or thematic unity of The Music Lovers; in this film Russell flings out ideas indiscriminately…. Obviously the film is a grab-bag; it doesn't all hang together, and one responds simply to the individual sequences, which are almost like the production numbers in a musical…. The depiction of Mahler's relationship with Alma is the major strength of the movie, and some of their scenes together have dramatic tension as well as emotional depth….

Unfortunately, the relationship of Mahler and Alma, which could have made a film in itself, is only one element in this elaborate potpourri, and Russell gets distracted by other subjects just when we are most intrigued. (p. 43)

Tommy is inventive, but it is also exhausting, because it is so totally limited to scenes of horror and vulgarity. The feeling that comes through most strongly is one that was probably not intended—Ken Russell's feeling of revulsion from the modern world. Tommy at least helps to explain why Russell is ordinarily drawn to period films. He obviously cannot abide the contemporary world; he is a nineteenth-century romantic living out of his time….

Most of the weaknesses of Tommy stem from the rock opera itself, a blend of sophomoric ideas, adolescent masochism, and bad music. It seems to me there is a basic conceptual problem with a rock opera in which the protagonist is deaf, dumb, and blind; Tommy must be the most passive, anemic hero ever created….

Russell's impulses may be fundamentally at war with the Who's beatific conceptions, and that helps to explain why the film is such a mess. The mindless glorification of youth that is part of the original opera doesn't mesh with Russell's butting mockery of youthful delirium. His own confusions magnify the problem. Given the film's emphasis on torment, exploitation, and commercialization, the feeble affirmative ending rings especially false…. The film is cyclical in structure, beginning in innocence and ending in innocence reclaimed. There is obviously a Christian parable peeking out from beneath the glitter, and the ending is meant to echo the crucifixion and the resurrection.

It is hard to tell how seriously Russell takes this Christ symbolism. All of his work reveals an ambivalence on the subject of religion. He wants to condemn the commercialism of the church, the atrocities committed in the name of faith; but he also means to endorse spiritual values. In both The Devils and Tommy, however, the spiritual affirmation is less convincing than the attack on the abuses of religion. At least The Devils succeeds in creating an imposing spiritual leader….

Lisztomania continues in the flamboyant circus style of Tommy. But this nineteenth-century comic opera … is not so relentlessly ugly, and Russell's satire has a lighter, more insolent tone….

In this case Russell has an underlying conception and a unifying style—a pop-art comic-strip style, built on parodies of old movie genres. (p. 44)

Despite all these stylistic flourishes, Listzomania has something on its mind; the collage of wild comic images builds to a climax of unexpected intensity. This is a much more adventurous, imaginative film than Tommy…. (p. 45)

What [Russell] is really saying in Lisztomania is that once the artist surrenders to the rule of marketplace, he has violated the natural order of the universe and released demons that cannot be controlled….

The paranoia in this view of the artist's responsibility is bizarre, but there is something irresistibly romantic in Russell's concern for the artist's integrity. In a world where everything has been debased and devalued, Russell still envisions art as the central creative act that brings order to a chaotic universe. The fact that most of his films examine the artist's betrayal of his vocation cannot obscure Russell's belief in the moral importance of art. His exalted view of art seems slightly insane and rather breathtaking.

The major problem with Lisztomania is formal. The pop art style is effective for dealing with Liszt's vulgar showmanship, but it limits the scope of the film…. Toward the end of the film, Russell seems to want to portray Liszt more sympathetically, but his style is not flexible enough to reflect this shift in attitude….

As in Tommy, Russell tries to end on a note of Christian redemption….

Perhaps this ending would have been more effective if the rest of the film had more mysterious romantic images to reflect Liszt's idealism. Russell's earlier films have a broader range of moods and emotions…. The loud, garish style of Tommy and Lisztomania is unrelieved by quieter moments. At its best Lisztomania is exceptionally powerful, but there are no shadings in the film, and that's why some of the spectacular set-pieces grow tiresome.

Both Tommy and Lisztomania are inventive but singularly unmoving; almost the only emotion they inspire is horror. In Savage Messiah Russell's affection for the characters is more important than any of his bravura effects. Even Mahler, which is closer to the style of a cartoon, has passionate feeling in some of the scenes between Mahler and Alma. The circus format of Tommy and Lisztomania is partly a function of the subject matter of these two films, but one cannot help feeling a measure of concern about Russell's increasing indifference to recognizable human emotions. (p. 46)

Russell's work is blemished by arrogance, self-indulgence, pomposity, and sensationalism…. Russell's work can be characterized as a series of vulgar, self-indulgent set-pieces without an organizing principle….

[However,] Russell's daring but still imperfect experiments with kaleidoscopic, non-linear, operatic style are symptomatic of a formal quandary that affects all filmmakers. Russell is one of the few artists who is pushing forward, working to forge a purely visual vocabulary. His most compelling images and characters already have a place in film history. (p. 47)

Stephen Farber, "Russellmania," in Film Comment (copyright © 1975 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center; all rights reserved), Vol. 11, No. 6, November-December, 1975, pp. 40-7.