I continued the Ken Russell season with his BBC biopic, Isadora Duncan, The Biggest Dancer In The World (1966).
I followed that with Karel Reisz's take on the same subject, Isadora (1968).
The two films are intertwined in more ways than just the subject as Melvyn Bragg who wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film worked on many projects with Ken and Venessa Redgrave would later appear in Ken's most notorious film The Devils (1971) and along side the actress most associated with Ken's film career, Glenda Jackson in Mary, Queen Of Scots in the same year.
Like The Devils, Isadora (the film) would suffer a terrible fate at the hands of the studio which cut the epic sweep of the story from it's original 168mins to 128mins on re-release (picking up the somewhat tacky title The Loves Of Isadora along the way) and has largely been seen at that length ever since.
Ken's Isadora is played by Vivian Pickles (who too was Mary, Queen Of Scots, on television also alongside Glenda in Elizabeth R) with great gusto and energy. His television docudrama is framed and punctuated as if he were making a film about Lennon and Yoko which in many ways he is.
Duncan and Yesenin were pretty much the same sensation only more so and in an age which was much more easily startled.
A blind reading of Duncan's life is so preposterously melodramatic it must be bad fiction.
But as it wasn't and it was that epic and tragic and loud I found myself watching the small BBC film and thinking what if Ken had more money and watching the big budget Reisz film and thinking what if Ken had directed it instead.
Reisz's film has some wonderful moments in it.
Particularly Redgrave dancing in the spirit of Isadora and she trained for six months to get that right but it lacks the scope that Ken's film tried to reach for.
Redgrave looks the part though I can't help but wonder if George Peppard could have put on a good Russian accent would he have been ideal for the part of Yesenin?
Pickles however has both the insane power and the fragility of the role in spades.
Should someone splice these two films together maybe it would be a masterpiece.
Balls all round.