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Women in Love



With this film, the audacious Ken Russell vaulted onto the international stage, drawing on the psychosexual radicalism of D. H. Lawrence's classic novel to shatter taboos in his own time. Set in an English mining community on the crest of modernity, Women in Love traces the shifting currents of desire that link the emancipated Brangwen sisters (Jennie Linden and an Oscar-winning Glenda Jackson) to a freethinking dreamer (Alan Bates) and a hard-willed industrialist (Oliver Reed)—as well as the men's own erotically charged friendship. Coupling earthy sensuality with kaleidoscopically stylized images, Russell pursues this quartet to the heights of agony and ecstasy, crafting a breathtaking drama of human sexuality at its most liberating, dominating, and destructive extremes.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Two audio commentaries from 2003, one featuring director Ken Russell and the other screenwriter and producer Larry Kramer
• Segments from a 2007 interview with Russell for the BAFTA Los Angeles Heritage Archive
• A British Picture: Portrait of an Enfant Terrible, Russell's 1989 biopic on his own life and career
• Interview from 1976 with actor Glenda Jackson
• Interviews with Kramer and actors Alan Bates and Jennie Linden from the set
• New interviews with director of photography Billy Williams and editor Michael Bradsell
• Second Best, a 1972 short film based on a D. H. Lawrence story, produced by and starring Bates
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Linda Ruth Williams

How new is the restoration? Same as the BFI or different? New to America or an exclusive to Criterion restoration job?

BFI was very impressive but ten minutes in the pub prior to and then during the holiday sequence are from an inferior source.

Hope this leads to some Russell titles I actually like or want to see!

Savage Messiah, Mahler and The Music Lovers would be crucial - from whomever is able to licence. Hoping for WA to upgrade their old DVD of Savage Messiah.

And The Boy Friend of course!!! What's the rights situation with that?

It was released on blu-ray by Warner Archive in February.

Does that preclude an eventual Criterion release?

Yes.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Unless I'm mistaken the only Russell film that seems to scare the living daylights out of Warner Brothers is The Devils. While we can certainly debate how good or bad Russell's work is I don't think Warner Brothers would put up much of a fight if Criterion asked them for The Boy Friend or Mahler. Or any of them other than The Devils. I can't imagine WB is making big bucks off of their current releases.

The reason I think Criterion won’t release The Boy Friend is because WB have already released it on their own “boutique label” (Warner Archive). The same goes for other films released by Warner Archive like Night Moves and Scarecrow.

And by all accounts the WA release of Boy Friend is already exceptional in terms of video and sound quality.

And if Criterion were to release it, it would probably be that same exact transfer and still not have much in the way of extras.

So the new transfer is likely new just to territories outside the UK.

Just now viewing the supplements for this release and was quite interested to see that the BBC DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS debacle is not only mentioned but illustrated by 2 or 3 enticingly outrageous minutes from the film itself in the documentary A BRITISH PICTURE. None of Richard's music of course but wittily rescored with bits of Johann! The transfer was a bit on the dupy side but not bad for 1989. Color palette appeared to be similar to the bright "storybook" look of THE BOYFRIEND and LIZSTOMANIA. I'm wondering though if the the retracked music was a localized substitution just to take the curse off the excerpted clips or if it was a satirical jab inherent in the original presentation. Paging Michael B.!

DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS has been on YouTube for years. Don’t tell the Strauss family. :-"

ethel wrote:DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS has been on YouTube for years. Don’t tell the Strauss family. :-"

This has been common knowledge for years, but it’s a dreadful copy, with horribly faded colours on top of all the BBC timecode. The BFI materials are infinitely better.

When it’s a choice between dreadful materials and no materials at all, those of us without access to superb BFI elements have to make do with YouTube, at least until the copyright expires...