Rating : - Swinging (Pre-Raphaelite) London
Reminiscing about their encounters in late Victorian and Edwardian London with survivors of the original Pre-Raphaelite movement, Joseph and Elizabeth Pennell observed that these artists and writers even in their later years were lively company, and they lamented that their "official" biographers had transformed them into a bunch of prigs. While much can be said against this Ken Russell "docudrama," he undeniably asserts the periodic flamboyance - ascending at times to zaniness - of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and some of his Pre-Raphaelite cohorts. It's fun to see a youthful Rossetti (Oliver Reed) and Lizzie Siddal (played by look-alike Judith Paris) horsing around on the beach as they elude the censure of their patron John Ruskin, or Rossetti in still higher spirits with his mistress Fanny Cornforth and with Holman Hunt's erstwhile fiancée, Annie Miller. Some of the voiceover quotes from Rossetti's poetry are well selected, and the merging of verse and image in later scenes achieves real poignancy. These virtues are worth stressing in a production apparently budgeted at 5 or 6 quid, and saturated with the flagrant disregard of inconvenient fact that became a Ken Russell trademark. E.g., Rossetti pictures of the 1870s are proudly displayed in his 1850s studio at Blackfriars Bridge, and as knowledge of the Pre-Raphaelites and their work has increased, such anachronisms will alienate some viewers as much as Russell's dismissive caricatures of the likes of Holman Hunt and William Michael Rossetti. John Ruskin is given quite a bit of screen time, but he is a schoolmarmish pedant -- not the Ruskin who championed Rossetti and paved his way to financial independence. Christina Rossetti fares better - save for being saddled with an Italian accent, while her brothers have none! There is a solid portrayal of William Morris by a future parliamentarian, Andrew Faulds, and an effete Swinburne contributed by a fellow poet, Christopher Logue. Oliver Reed, whose appearance changes relatively little as Rossetti ages, does not look like the poet-painter in early manhood, but he does capture something of his presence around the age of 36 - the age, incidentally, when Rossetti posed for his final photographs. Reed achieves in fact as insightful a portrait as he can manage, surrounded as he is by "infernal" effects that dominate the last part of the film. Attempting to approximate hallucinations induced - or at least intensified - by Rossetti's mounting addiction to chloral, Russell portrays Elizabeth Siddal ascending out of her coffin with vampiric regularity. After the generally sympathetic portrayal of Rossetti and the living Elizabeth, this descent into Hammer horror is regrettable. Despite a game cast and some engaging sprints of fancy, this effort must reside among the "might-have-beens" of successful docudrama.