Savage Messiah (1972)

Savage Messiah is a 1972 Ken Russell movie which gets slightly overshadowed by his more well-known (and more notorious) 1970s movies.

Ken Russell made his initial reputation in television in the 60s with a series of wonderful TV films. At this stage it was obvious that Russell was obsessed by the idea of exploring the psychology of creative individuals (mainly composers but sometimes writers and painters as well), and by the idea of doing this in an interesting, unconventional and visually inventive way. These Ken Russell TV-films bore no resemblance to the usual run of dry dreary documentaries. They were fresh, exciting and challenging.

It was a subject to which Russell would return over and over again throughout his career. In 1972, after making a couple of features on other subjects, he was ready to explore this matter once again. Savage Messiah is the story of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

Russell was fascinated by genius. He made films about men like Mahler, Debussy, Liszt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Tchaikovsky. Men who achieved immense success and are universally considered to be among the greats. Russell was also interested in the effect that success had on these people, an effect that that was perhaps not always positive.

In Savage Messiah he has chosen to make a movie about a sculptor, Henri Gaudier, who is not a great deal more than a footnote in art history. And Gaudier never had to worry about the effect that success might have on him. He never enjoyed any. While the other creative artists about whom Russell made movies lived in luxury and elegance Henri and Sophie live in squalor. It’s not just their surroundings that are squalid. Their lives are squalid.

The movie focuses a good deal on Henri’s relationship with Sophie Brzeska, a writer who achieved even less success than Henri.

Gaudier was a modernist, and I’m afraid my prejudice against modernism made me less than sympathetic to him, and to the art he created which to me seems extraordinarily ugly and uninteresting.

Since Russell was fascinated by genius we have at assume that he thought Gaudier was a genius, and to appreciate the movie you have to accept that assessment. But unlike his other similar movies this is a movie about genius unrecognised and thwarted.

The nature of the relationship between Henri Gaudier and Sophie remains obscure. It seems to have been passionate but mostly (or more probably entirely) sexless. In the movie, as in reality, Henri consoles himself with prostitutes, paid for by Sophie.

The movie opens with Henri’s meeting with Sophie. Henri is young, irrepressible, arrogant, hyper-confident and hyper-active. Sophie is twice his age, her ambitions to write have been frustrated. Sophie is drawn to Henri’s energy and enthusiasm. Sophie thinks about suicide a lot.

They move to London. Gaudier meets eccentric art dealer Angus Corky (Lindsay Kemp) and his equally strange friends who see themselves as the artistic avant-garde. They’re the counterculture of the Edwardian era (and remember this movie was made in 1972 so it’s fair to assume that the parallels with the 1960/70s counterculture are deliberate). They’re a gallery of grotesques.

Gaudier tries to make a success of his art and never doubts for one moment that he will succeed.

He then meets Gosh Boyle (yes her name is Gosh and she’s played by Helen Mirren). Gosh seems more than willing to offer him the physical side of love that Sophie has always denied.

It’s a film (like all of Russell’s movies about geniuses) about the madness of genius but in this case there is a greater madness on the horizon as war fever sweeps England. The madness of genius is a positive madness but there is nothing positive about the madness of war. But an obsession with death is common to the genius heroes of many of Russell’s movies (notably The Music Lovers and Mahler).

It’s hard to judge the acting since all the characters are mad and hyper-active and the performances reflect this. Scott Antony (whose career proved to be astonishingly brief) is weirdly compelling as Gaudier. Dorothy Tutin is even weirder as Sophie, and Helen Mirren chews the scenery with abandon as Gosh. Lindsay Kemp is bizarrely likeable as Angus Corky, Gaudier’s crazy agent. It’s fun to see wonderful actors like Peter Vaughan, Robert Lang and Michael Gough in the supporting cast.

There’s no shortage of Ken Russell excess in this production. If you hate his movies you’ll hate this one. If you love his movies you’ll love this one.

Savage Messiah is on DVD in the Warner Archive series. It’s still obtainable but not that easy to find.