Women in Love (4k Ultra HD Blu ray) BFI
What D. H. Lawrence’s and Ken Russell’s Women in Love have in common is a focussed passion. Lawrence’s passion was an impatient glorious shouting out for change: radical new ways of relating between men and women. Whilst Russell’s passion was the joy of a filmmaker finally given a big screen subject and script he could enthuse over. Both artists produced works that are vibrantly alive.
Lawrence was at the cutting edge of the modern novel for 1921 whilst Russell was rightly positioned for the continuous emancipation of British cinema in 1969. D. H. Lawrence may have greater depths of expression than Ken Russell. Yet the sheer sensual glow of Russell’s compelling visuals managed to vividly depict central Lawrencian themes of love, hate, sex and death.
Let’s consider some dates. The book of Women in Love is set in 1910, before the First World War, and was published in 1921. The film version is set in 1920, two years after the war, and was released in 1969. Russell was able to capitalise on his dates and make parallels between the emancipation of middle class women in those decades. Take the pre-credit opening scene where Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) and Ursula (Jennie Linden) announce to Ursula’s parents that they are off to attend a wedding. They’re not pleased, preferring the sisters to stay home and have tea with a visiting relative. A note of rebellion is struck. On the street the women (dressed in a defiantly colourful twenties style that prefigures sixties fashion) discuss the idea of marriage and whether they should undergo that experience. They catch sight of a stressed couple wheeling a baby in a pram. Ursula says of marriage, “Not likely, more like to be the end of experience” Gudrun agrees, “Yes, there is that to consider.” They’re off to experiment with their new individualism before deciding if marriage would be suitable.
Now this is not like Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham going off to have a wild time in London in Smashing Time (1967) but a defiantly 1969 Women in Love with Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen encountering Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed) and Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates), with his D.H.Lawrence persona, to argumentatively smash up the social norms of Beldover a mining town in the Midlands.
Yet Lawrence’s protest, and Russell’s, is not solely about a very English form of repression but the limits to freedom and what it means to be human. Women in Love is existential and concerned with primordial states. That’s what Alexander Verney-Elliott (Ken Russell’s son) says in this film’s special BFI feature interview. Yet although he considers Sartre and Heidegger to be behind the drama I would also emphasise, as many literary critics have, the influence of Nietzsche (Lawrence read him when he was a student). Nietzsche strongly coloured Lawrence’s characters’ rejection of conventional morality.
Russell’s film is mostly brilliant surface. By that I don’t mean it’s a superficial film but limited one. It works very well at conveying a heightened sense of connecting to nature and the pleasures of the flesh (The famous nude wrestling scene between Rupert and Gerald; Rupert’s meal time discussion of the sexual metaphors for eating figs and Gudrun’s dancing round the cows in the field are sensual triumphs of Russell filmmaking). But Lawrence’s darker and more primordial state of awareness defeats Russell.
Oliver Reed (splendidly brooding and tormented) and Glenda Jackson (artfully cruel and manipulative) superbly convey despair at attempting to overcome emotional conflicts, with the need for a deeper love that will fully realise their human potential.
Russell’s direction almost pulls it off. Yet what’s finally lacking is mystery and apprehension for I think the inner darker pulse of Lawrence’s writing is un-filmable. Both Lawrence and Russell are concerned with transcendence but here the book is much more successful than the film. However because of the casting of Alan Bates (brilliant as Rupert Birkin aka Lawrence) Russell has an articulate anchor of positivity in Women in Love. This makes up for not being able to fully explore the psycho – sexual dynamic of Lawrence’s characters, allowing Russell to give us a balanced and detached over view of their hopes and desires. At the end, after Gerald’s death by suicide, Gudrun says to Rupert that he can’t possibly have two forms of love Rupert says “I don’t believe that.” Birkin still holds on to his strong desire for an ideal male / female relationship.
If there’s a definite sixties vigour in Women in Love there’s also a sixties slow motion cliché of a naked Rupert and Gudrun rolling vertically through the grass and an over-emphasised new wave edit from them caressing each other to the clinging drowned bodies, in the drained lake, of two young newly weds: that moment being a bit too derivative of Alan Resnais – think of lovers bodies and radioactive dust in Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
But some minor irritations to one side, Ken Russell’s Women in Love remains one of his best films. Confidently directed, intelligently scripted, great film costumes, well acted by all, with fine textured photography and enhanced by the music by Georges Delerue. In its day Women in Love was a landmark film of sexual liberation. Not all of D. H. Lawrence then. But what’s there more than compensates and rewards fifty four years on.
Alan Price©2025.
Women in Love (4k Ultra HD Blu ray) BFI
What D. H. Lawrence’s and Ken Russell’s Women in Love have in common is a focussed passion. Lawrence’s passion was an impatient glorious shouting out for change: radical new ways of relating between men and women. Whilst Russell’s passion was the joy of a filmmaker finally given a big screen subject and script he could enthuse over. Both artists produced works that are vibrantly alive.
Lawrence was at the cutting edge of the modern novel for 1921 whilst Russell was rightly positioned for the continuous emancipation of British cinema in 1969. D. H. Lawrence may have greater depths of expression than Ken Russell. Yet the sheer sensual glow of Russell’s compelling visuals managed to vividly depict central Lawrencian themes of love, hate, sex and death.
Let’s consider some dates. The book of Women in Love is set in 1910, before the First World War, and was published in 1921. The film version is set in 1920, two years after the war, and was released in 1969. Russell was able to capitalise on his dates and make parallels between the emancipation of middle class women in those decades. Take the pre-credit opening scene where Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) and Ursula (Jennie Linden) announce to Ursula’s parents that they are off to attend a wedding. They’re not pleased, preferring the sisters to stay home and have tea with a visiting relative. A note of rebellion is struck. On the street the women (dressed in a defiantly colourful twenties style that prefigures sixties fashion) discuss the idea of marriage and whether they should undergo that experience. They catch sight of a stressed couple wheeling a baby in a pram. Ursula says of marriage, “Not likely, more like to be the end of experience” Gudrun agrees, “Yes, there is that to consider.” They’re off to experiment with their new individualism before deciding if marriage would be suitable.
Now this is not like Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham going off to have a wild time in London in Smashing Time (1967) but a defiantly 1969 Women in Love with Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen encountering Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed) and Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates), with his D.H.Lawrence persona, to argumentatively smash up the social norms of Beldover a mining town in the Midlands.
Yet Lawrence’s protest, and Russell’s, is not solely about a very English form of repression but the limits to freedom and what it means to be human. Women in Love is existential and concerned with primordial states. That’s what Alexander Verney-Elliott (Ken Russell’s son) says in this film’s special BFI feature interview. Yet although he considers Sartre and Heidegger to be behind the drama I would also emphasise, as many literary critics have, the influence of Nietzsche (Lawrence read him when he was a student). Nietzsche strongly coloured Lawrence’s characters’ rejection of conventional morality.
Russell’s film is mostly brilliant surface. By that I don’t mean it’s a superficial film but limited one. It works very well at conveying a heightened sense of connecting to nature and the pleasures of the flesh (The famous nude wrestling scene between Rupert and Gerald; Rupert’s meal time discussion of the sexual metaphors for eating figs and Gudrun’s dancing round the cows in the field are sensual triumphs of Russell filmmaking). But Lawrence’s darker and more primordial state of awareness defeats Russell.
Oliver Reed (splendidly brooding and tormented) and Glenda Jackson (artfully cruel and manipulative) superbly convey despair at attempting to overcome emotional conflicts, with the need for a deeper love that will fully realise their human potential.
Russell’s direction almost pulls it off. Yet what’s finally lacking is mystery and apprehension for I think the inner darker pulse of Lawrence’s writing is un-filmable. Both Lawrence and Russell are concerned with transcendence but here the book is much more successful than the film. However because of the casting of Alan Bates (brilliant as Rupert Birkin aka Lawrence) Russell has an articulate anchor of positivity in Women in Love. This makes up for not being able to fully explore the psycho – sexual dynamic of Lawrence’s characters, allowing Russell to give us a balanced and detached over view of their hopes and desires. At the end, after Gerald’s death by suicide, Gudrun says to Rupert that he can’t possibly have two forms of love Rupert says “I don’t believe that.” Birkin still holds on to his strong desire for an ideal male / female relationship.
If there’s a definite sixties vigour in Women in Love there’s also a sixties slow motion cliché of a naked Rupert and Gudrun rolling vertically through the grass and an over-emphasised new wave edit from them caressing each other to the clinging drowned bodies, in the drained lake, of two young newly weds: that moment being a bit too derivative of Alan Resnais – think of lovers bodies and radioactive dust in Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
But some minor irritations to one side, Ken Russell’s Women in Love remains one of his best films. Confidently directed, intelligently scripted, great film costumes, well acted by all, with fine textured photography and enhanced by the music by Georges Delerue. In its day Women in Love was a landmark film of sexual liberation. Not all of D. H. Lawrence then. But what’s there more than compensates and rewards fifty four years on.
Alan Price©2025.
By Alan Price • books, film, year 2025 • Tags: Alan Price, books, film