Women in Love (15)
The film that launched the recently-deceased Ken Russell's (The Devils, Altered States) career was this, his Oscar-winning adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's classic novel about the relationships between two sisters and their lovers in an English mining town following WWI.
Questing and free-spirited, artist Gudrun (Glenda Jackson, who won an Oscar for the role) and schoolteacher Ursula (Jennie Linden) are intrigued when they meet friends Gerald (Oliver Reed) and Rupert (Alan Bates) at a wedding, and subsequently form couples. Experiencing both harmony and discord as each pair wrestle with sexual politics, they try to find new ways of being together.
A faithful, sensual adaptation of Lawrence's novel, Russell's film also owes much to the bohemian culture of the late 1960s.
Women in Love is showing as part of our Ken Russell: Enfant Terrible of British Cinema Film Extra Saturday School on Saturday 11 February.
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