A quirky and fascinating look into the life of the father of impressionist music from a very young Ken Russell.

Debussy: a man from humble beginnings who had a way with music (and the ladies). Judged a bit of a miscreant by his academic contemporaries, he resisted the existing theoretical infrastructure and sought his own aural pleasure before anything else.

Perhaps this is why British filmmaker Ken Russell chose Debussy as a subject of study so early in his own career.

Now, most who would recognize Ken Russell's name would know him from such psychedelic adventures as Tommy or Altered States. What most wouldn't know is that he had a thing for making films about the people he deemed (or, perhaps, the people paying him deemed) cultural icons. His list includes Isadora Duncan, Oscar Wilde, Rudolph Valentino, Antonio Gaudi, Hieronymus Bosch, as well as Tchaikovsky, Liszt, Mahler, Elgar, Bartok, Delius, and more. Once you get into his films of the mid-70s, it can get pretty weird. I mean, REALLY weird. And if I think it's weird...

It started innocently enough...

It was for the BBC documentary series Monitor that he made his first few shorts and features about composers. Although it IS a little quirky, it is informative, entertaining, and representative of a turning point in the development of a legendary filmmaker.

 

 

For more about the making of the film, check out this wicked article from Dangerous Minds (reader discretion advised).