Savage Messiah Film Review.wps

Savage Messiah (1972) film review John A. Walker (copyright 2009)

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), the subject of the luridly named, Metrocolour film Savage Messiah (MGM-EMI), was a French-born sculptor and draughtsman who lived in a variety of towns and cities: Bristol, Nuremberg, Munich, Paris and London. He belongs to the category ‘radical bohemian outsider’ and since he was killed at the age of 23 fighting Germans during World War I, also to the category ‘promising artists who died tragically young and became famous posthumously’. No doubt, this is why Ken Russell, the film’s director and producer, was attracted to him. Another reason was Henri’s private life, namely his tempestuous relationship with a Polish-born aspiring novelist called Sophie (or Zofia) Brzeska who was 20 years older than him. (She was, therefore, as much a mother or sister figure as a lover.) They met in Paris when Gaudier was 18-years old. Their relationship was volatile because he was intense and sexually frustrated, and she was highly-strung.

Both suffered from numerous illnesses.

Photo of Henri Gaudier.

Photo of Sophie Brzeska. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gaudier’s commitment to Sophie was signalled by the fact that he added her surname to his. Sophie refused to have sex with Henri and so they lived together platonically, often in conditions of extreme poverty and hunger. Food shortages caused by World War I aggravated their domestic misery. Henri came from a provincial background near Orleans, which has of course a Gothic cathedral famous for its sculptures and stained glass. As an artist, he was virtually self-taught. At school he was trained in commerce and later did translations and clerical tasks for businesses in Bristol and London by day and drew and modelled/carved in his spare time. Eventually, in 1913, he gave up his day job to devote himself to art full time. Gradually, he met and befriended some fellow artists and members of London’s literary and artistic circles – such figures as Jacob Epstein, Alfred Wolmark, Horace Brodzky, Roger Fry, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Haldane MacFall, Enid Bagnold, Nina Hamnett, Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murray. Unfortunately, Henri and Sophie often behaved aggressively towards their acquaintances and there were several quarrels and portrait busts of patrons were vindictively smashed. Henri condemned them for being ‘bourgeois’. (This was a clear instance of épater le bourgeoisie and biting the hand that feeds you.) His personal hygiene left much to be desired: either he could not afford to or refused to wash and so stank during the summer. Nevertheless, he managed to obtain some commissions and to sell a few works for small sums of money. In addition, he exhibited in various mixed shows in private and public galleries including one that had sculptures by Constantin Brancusi in it. The two artists met briefly. Henri had

links with the Bloomsbury Group and was a member of the new British art movement called Vorticism along with the painters Wyndham Lewis and David Bomberg, and the poet Ezra Pound. Henri contributed statements on sculpture to the latter’s manifesto Blast. One of Gaudier-Brzeska’s most famous and substantial carvings was a phallus-like portrait in marble of Pound’s head.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound, marble, 1914; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas (Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, acquired in 1988) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Before joining the French army in September 1914, therefore, Henri was becoming known in London as an exceptional new talent. He had originally ignored his call-up papers and was classified as a deserter. However, once he became a soldier he acquitted himself well and was promoted to the rank of Sergeant. His physical

strength as a sculptor and the privations of his bohemian existence in London seemed to have prepared him for the hardships of the trenches. His last sculpture was a carving made from the wooden butt of a German rifle. Pound considered Henri was the only example of ‘absolute genius’ that he had known and, within a year of his death, published a memoir that marked the beginning of the sculptor’s legend. A distressed Sophie survived for another seven years. In 1922, she was admitted to Gloucester Mental Hospital and was certified insane at the time of her death in 1925. Henri’s estate, which had belonged to Sophie, was valued at £250 and consisted of 13 oil paintings and pastels, 25 sculptures and 1,630 drawings. It became state property. A few works were retained for public collections but the rest were sold. The actor and poet Christopher Logue wrote the film’s script, which was based on a text also entitled Savage Messiah by H.S. ‘Jim’ Ede (1895-1990) published in 1931. (1) Ede’s book mainly consisted of Henri’s letters to Sophie, which reveal a bohemian couple experiencing hardship and struggle, whose behaviour was frequently bizarre. Sophie, it seems, was the first to describe Henri as a ‘savage messiah’. The word ‘messiah’ suggests a God-inspired prophet while the word ‘savage’ suggests a crude, violent and uncivilised individual – a widespread conception of artists - but also alludes to the influence of ‘primitive’ art on Gaudier’s oeuvre. Like so many early modern artists, African and Oceanic carvings inspired him and inflected his style. He was also influenced by the work of modern sculptors such as Brancusi and Epstein. Greek and Roman sculpture and its centuries of influence he dismissed because of its illusionism.

Ken Russell was born in 1927 in Southampton and made a number of false starts he tried the armed forces, acting and photography - before he discovered his metier was filmmaking. (2) ( See his website http://www.kenrussell.com/) In his youth, he watched films obsessively at local cinemas and even acquired a projector to screen movies at home. A period at Walthamstow School of Art and time working in an art gallery confirmed his fascination for all things visual. In 1959, he began making television documentaries for the prestigious arts strand Monitor (1958-65). The young, untutored Russell was verbally inarticulate and incapable of writing a script or a commentary. His particular skill was to shoot dramatic and poetical sequences of images and then combine them with emotive music. Soon he manifested a penchant for drama-documentaries about artists – particularly famous composers. His elegiac 1962 study of Elgar was the most memorable arts programme of the 1960s. For Monitor he made films about British pop art, the French naïve painter Le Douanier Rousseau and the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. In 1967, he made a film for television about the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which starred Oliver Reed. Later he directed feature films about Liszt, Mahler and Tchaikovsky. Russell, one of Britain’s most commercially successful, eccentric, innovative, prolific and controversial film directors, arouses extreme reactions both for and against. Many regard him as unEnglish because of his liking for the bizarre, the erotic, the theatrical and excesses of all kinds. Savage Messiah has its erotic scenes but overall it is a relatively straightforward narrative. Savage Messiah was very much a personal project: Russell mortgaged his house to

raise the finance and made the film quickly with a small crew at Lee International Studios in London. Gaudier’s story, he remarked, was an opportunity to show that art is ‘simply exploiting to the full one’s own natural gifts’ and involves hard work, misery, momentary defeat and ‘taking a lot of bloody stick’. When he first learned about Gaudier during the 1950s, he too was a struggling, would-be artist and so he strongly identified with the French sculptor’s plight. It is clear from Russell’s movies and published statements that he regards himself as a creative artist on a par with fine artists and composers, and that he thinks one of the main functions of art is to sublimate the artist’s personal emotions and problems. It is not surprising, therefore, that biopics of romantic artists and musicians should have appealed to him but there is an inherent conflict because the artist-director competes with his subjects. Composers suit Russell’s purposes better than visual artists because composers supply the music on the soundtrack while he provides the accompanying moving pictures. Scott Antony (b. 1950, aka Anthony Scott), who played Gaudier-Brzeska, was a handsome and energetic British actor. He was unknown at the time and subsequently failed to become a star. Dorothy Tutin (1930-2001), an acclaimed British stage performer, played the overwrought Sophie with conviction and skill.

Scott Antony and Dorothy Tutin. Image may be subject to copyright. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stills from the movie. Images may be subject to copyright. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Helen Mirren appeared as Gosh Boyle, the daughter of a wealthy army officer and a suffragette who attracts Henri because of her voluptuous body (which he draws) and her fondness for petrol bombs and free love. This character appears to have been a total invention on the filmmaker’s part because no such person is mentioned in a recent biography of the artist. As in Age of Consent, an earlier film about an artist (see my review of that film), Mirren was called upon to appear nude, this time while climbing and descending a staircase. (An allusion, surely, to Marcel Duchamp’s famous painting Nude descending a staircase [1912].)

Helen Mirren in the nude in Savage Messiah. Image may be subject to copyright. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------She also disrobes during a cabaret-style act inside a nightclub decorated with exaggerated Vorticist designs. Artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942-94), the future director of Caravaggio, was Russell’s set designer and it was in his warehouse studio that Scott Antony took drawing lessons while preparing for his role. Jarman also commissioned Paul Dufficey, a fine artist who trained at Stourbridge College of Art from 1968 to 1971,

to create some drawings. Another of those helping Jarman to make props was Bill Woodrow, who was later to become one of Britain’s most noted sculptors. The largest prop was a 17-ft-high head of an Easter Island Statue, which was constructed from Polystyrene. In one scene, Gaudier-Brzeska upsets the guards of The Louvre by climbing on top of this sculpture, which was Russell’s way of visualising the sculptor’s enthusiasm for ‘primitive’ art. Omega-workshop style painted furniture was also produced which later surfaced in a Chelsea antiques market as genuine Bloomsbury artefacts. Some simulated Gaudier-Brzeska charcoal drawings were also stolen and sold as originals in London galleries and auction houses. In his journals, Jarman recalls how stressful it was working for such a demanding taskmaster as Russell:

March 1972: Megalomaniac film-director in a fit of creative frenzy: ‘The central image of our movie is the titanic struggle of the sculptor to release his genius from the intractable marble. What I need is a torso, a torso like no other, in snow-white marble …’ (3)

Jarman phoned some London art schools to find a stone carver but discovered it was a forgotten skill. He then commissioned a monumental mason but his piece proved unsatisfactory. Russell raged: ‘You call yourself an artist, you sculpt it; you’ve got 48 hours.’ Jarman and Christopher Hobbs finally supplied the torso on time by attacking a block of stone in 20-minute relays. The film’s soundtrack is frequently loud and the acting manic: the two

protagonists shout and argue continually, and Henri in particular leaps about. He becomes especially excited on the cliffs of the Isle of Portland in Dorset, famous for Portland limestone, at the sight of so much raw material. In consequence, some viewers will find the film tiring and the histrionics of the couple wearisome. At the same time, Russell’s trademark – his use of various kinds of music to accompany the images – was now and then effective. Since the primary focus of this biopic is the vicissitudes of the romance between Gaudier and Brzeska, the art of sculpture tends take second place. However, towards the end of the film, the hard labour involved in carving blocks of stone with metal chisels is depicted and while he works, Henri declaims his rather immature views of the nature of art. We also see Henri carving an outline of a large female nude on the surface of a road using an electric drill while labourers and office workers watch in admiration.

A photograph of this scene taken from a high viewpoint was used for publicity purposes. There were also photos of Mirren in the nude and slogans such as ‘Every man has a dream that must be realised’. One poster declared

‘… all art is sex!’ Near the end of the film, Sophie tells Henri that his sculptures will benefit art dealers and rich, powerful collectors rather than the people but this critique – which one suspects Russell shared – was simply left hanging. There was no suggestion that artists could devise ways of circumventing the art market and reaching a wider audience. As if to make amends for the lack of attention paid to Henri’s sculptures, Russell concludes with shots of a posthumous exhibition in which a series of bronzes and stone carvings are displayed, some on revolving bases. These works must have been filmed at Kettle’s Yard, the house -cum-art gallery Ede donated to Cambridge in 1966, which possesses a number Gaudier-Brzeska’s works, because it is cited in the film’s credits. (See the Kettle’s Yard website http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/) Ede, who had been trained as a painter and later became a Tate Gallery curator, had bought the sculptures in 1927 during the sale of Sophie’s estate.

Savage Messiah did poorly at the box office and most critics were unimpressed. Pauline Kael, the respected American reviewer, praised Tutin’s acting but dismissed Antony’s. She found the film hyperbolic and was highly critical of it and Russell’s representation of art and artists:

‘Savage Messiah starts by lunging into the middle of a situation and then just keeps throwing things at you. It’s more hurried than his other films, and not so visually lush. You feel as if it were rushing through the projector at the wrong speed and with the sound turned up to panic level. Russell edits with a cleaver, and the frenetic intercutting is choppy and rhythm less.’ (4)

Russell, she opined, was ‘a compulsive Hollywoodizer, and his images of the artist’s suffering are frantic versions of Hollywood’s … he celebrates the pandemonium and senselessness of art and life.’ Her verdict was: Russell ‘turns Gaudier-Brzeska into the virgin artist raped in life by his dilettante admirers and raped in death by the fashionable world. One can’t just dismiss Russell’s movies, because they have an influence. They cheapen everything they touch – not consciously, I think, but instinctively.’

In 2004, a substantial new biography of Gaudier-Brzeska by Paul O’Keeffe was published, but it did not discuss or evaluate Russell’s film. (5) One reviewer remarked that it was hard to see how such a long book could be based on such a short artistic career – five years – and perhaps the same can be said of Russell’s

biopic. Since Gaudier-Brzeska died at such a young age, we will never know if he would have developed into a major sculptor comparable to Brancusi, Epstein or Henry Moore (who was influenced by Henri’s work). However, the quality and originality of the art he produced during that career persuaded Pound, Ede, Russell and many collectors, curators and art historians that he would. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(1) H.S. Ede, Savage Messiah, (London: Heinemann, 1931; new edn Gordon Fraser, 1971).

(2) On Russell, see: Ken Russell, A British Picture: An Autobiography, (London: Heinemann, 1989) and Ken Russell, The Lion Roars: Ken Russell on Film, (London: Faber & Faber, 1993). Joseph Lanza, Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films, (Chicago Review Press, 2007).

(3) Derek Jarman, Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman, (London: Century, 1991).

(4) Pauline Kael, ‘Hyperbole and Narcissus’ [November 18th, 1972], Reeling, (London: Marion Boyars, 1977), pp. 46-52.

(5) Paul O’Keeffe, Gaudier-Brzeska: An Absolute Case of Genius, (London: Allen

Lane/Penguin Books, 2004). The author mentions the film in his acknowledgements so he has seen it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------John A. Walker is a British painter and art historian. He is the author of Arts TV, Art and Artists on Screen and Art and Celebrity.