11 - An Extraordinary Parallel: Ken Russell and Dennis Potter Side by Side

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Looking back on the golden age of British television, it seems that most historians and critics have focused predominantly on grittier, political works such as those by Ken Loach or Jack Rosenthal, leaving by the wayside the truly incredible variety of programming available in the 1960s. Comparatively little has been written about the many sitcoms of the age, the variety shows, and the growing trend of non-naturalism in television plays. Even the original television works of such writers as Harold Pinter or Tom Stoppard are most frequently relegated to mere footnotes in their biographies. Such is also the case with two of the most notable proponents of non-naturalism in television, Ken Russell and Dennis Potter. And while Russell’s television work has received some increased attention in recent years, most of Potter’s work, though nominally admired, languishes in relative obscurity.

What is more surprising, however, is that even in the little that has been written about their work, no one has pointed out the clear parallels between them: their preoccupation with the themes of sex, religion and death; their use of musical non sequiturs, which became a trademark of Potter’s and a defining feature of Russell’s work in the 1970s; as well as their layered structures, which combine fantasy and reality in the broken psyches of their leading characters. Of course, it may seem counterintuitive to compare the work of a director and a writer, but it bears mentioning that both Potter and Russell were clear authors of their work. Russell wrote most of the screenplays for the films he directed but even when he didn’t he was either heavily collaboratively involved in the writing process (for instance, underlining the passages from the novel he wanted in the film of Women in Love [United Artists, 1969] from a script written by American playwright Larry Kramer,1 or in his work with Stephen Volk or Barry Sandler on Gothic [Virgin Vision/Vestron, 1986] and Crimes of Passion [New World Pictures, 1984], respectively) or would end up imposing his own style and ideas over a screenplay originally intended to play out completely differently (Paddy Chayefsky, the writer of Altered States [Warner Bros., 1980] removed his name from the film due to what he perceived as Russell’s unwelcome intrusions).