Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 76: Friday Mar 16

Savage Messiah (Russell, 1972):
The Montpelier
, 43 Choumert Road, Peckham, London, SE15 4AR. 3pm FREE

This is the highlight of the RussellForever season for me, a first airing for many a long year of Ken Russell's Henri Gaudier biopic, Savage Messiah.

Here is an extract from Tribune film critic Neil Young's review:

'Vibrantly unconventional biopic, (melo-)dramatising the unorthodox relationship – more inspirational/mental than romantic/sexual – between penniless French sculptor Henri Gaudier (Scott Anthony) and a much older Polish writer Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin), in Paris and London during the early years of the 20th century. Though not all of Russell’s flashy directorial and gambits pay off, Savage Messiah has a spiky, bracing charm all its own and rivals The Elephant Man among the most convincing, scruffily evocative cinematic visions of bygone London. The air of persuasively percussive exuberance renders the sudden ending (reflecting Gaudier’s fate in the Great War’s trenches) all the more jarringly poignant: a pair of sepia-tinted stills show Anthony-as-Gaudier among his comrades-in-arms, grinning laddishly in uniform, white of tooth and muddy of face.'
You can read it in full here.

Here is the trailer

The screening has been organised by Days Are Numbers.
Days Are Numbers is an irreverent, insightful and often incendiary blogsite dedicated to the best in left-of-centre music and films. Co-conspirators Alan and Aneet write about a wide-range of talkies and tunes – from the work of Roger Corman to Italo-disco, throwing in the occasional mix and the odd podcast. Days Are Numbers host their very own monthly film night at The Montpelier in Peckham.

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