Song of Summer is
the Ken Russell film most admired by those who don’t particularly like Ken
Russell. It is restrained, gentle and
elegiac; free of the loud and lurid qualities that characterized – (at least in
the minds of critics) – Russell’s later features. Eric Denby (Christopher Gable) is a young man
who leaves his provincial English town to become an assistant to the great
composer Fredrick Delius, who has been stricken with blindness and paralysis thanks
to years of dealing with syphilis.
Delius is conveyed in an amazingly vivid performance by Max Adrian. Reduced to a squawking child by his
condition, Delius is only redeemed by brief moments of civility and by the
sheer love of his music shared by those around him. Eric especially struggles to reconcile Delius’
behavior with the beautiful music he produces. This theme runs through many
of Russell’s films; where does the artist
end and the art begin? The film is
filled with moments that are not only purely magical but illustrative of the peculiar
qualities of cinema itself; especially the sequence in which Eric is rowing Delius
in a boat on a lake and enduring an insulting attack on his religious beliefs. The scene suddenly segues into a luminous moment on the shore when Delius becomes
inspired to compose. He dictates his
notes to Eric, and Russell’s camera shows us each detail in the environment
that the new musical cues are intended to represent; rolling waves, the cries
of seagulls, etc. Shot in the
high-contrast black-and-white style of a contemporary documentary, making the most
of natural light, Song of Summer
feels more real than many of Russell’s actual documentaries. Russell’s TV films from the late 60s are purer and more
powerful than many of his features; in fact maybe most of them, and Song of Summer may be the best of them
of all.
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