# What is the best Ken Russell film?

> Lavish composer biopics and scandal-courting features sit beside the black-and-white BBC portraits where his career began, and a few of these reached the screen only after the censors had trimmed them.

*By YPB Team · Published November 10, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-ken-russell-film*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Women in Love** — score 1000/1000
   A 1969 adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel with Alan Bates and Oliver Reed that won Glenda Jackson the Academy Award for Best Actress.
2. **Dante's Inferno** — score 698/1000
   A 1967 BBC Omnibus film starring Oliver Reed as the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
3. **Valentino** — score 649/1000
   A 1977 biopic of the silent star Rudolph Valentino, played by the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.
4. **Gothic** — score 592/1000
   A 1986 film about the 1816 night at the Villa Diodati, with Gabriel Byrne as Byron, Julian Sands as Percy Shelley and Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley.
5. **Whore** — score 525/1000
   A 1991 drama in which Theresa Russell plays a Los Angeles street prostitute who tells her story directly to the camera.
6. **Salome's Last Dance** — score 444/1000
   A 1988 film in which Oscar Wilde watches a private staging of his banned play Salome in a brothel, with Glenda Jackson as Herodias.
7. **The Debussy Film** — score 444/1000
   A 1965 BBC Monitor film about a director making a film on Claude Debussy, with Oliver Reed as Debussy and Vladek Sheybal as the director.
8. **Tommy** — score 444/1000
   The 1975 film of The Who's rock opera, with Roger Daltrey as Tommy, Ann-Margret as his mother and Elton John as the Pinball Wizard.
9. **Savage Messiah** — score 444/1000
   A 1972 film about the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (Scott Antony) and his companion Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin).
10. **The Boy Friend** — score 345/1000
   A 1971 film of Sandy Wilson's stage musical starring Twiggy, who won two Golden Globe Awards for the role.
11. **The Rainbow** — score 345/1000
   A 1989 adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel with Sammi Davis as Ursula Brangwen and Glenda Jackson as her mother Anna.
12. **Mahler** — score 345/1000
   A 1974 film about the composer Gustav Mahler, played by Robert Powell, told through flashbacks on a train journey.
13. **French Dressing** — score 345/1000
   Russell's first feature, a 1964 comedy with James Booth as a deckchair attendant who sets up a film festival in a run-down seaside town.
14. **Always on Sunday** — score 345/1000
   A 1965 BBC Monitor film about the painter Henri Rousseau, who is played by the self-taught artist James Lloyd.
15. **The Devils** — score 345/1000
   A 1971 drama starring Oliver Reed as the priest Urbain Grandier and Vanessa Redgrave as Sister Jeanne, based on Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun.
16. **The Music Lovers** — score 345/1000
   A 1971 film about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky starring Richard Chamberlain, with Glenda Jackson as his wife Antonina Milyukova.
17. **Isadora Duncan** — score 345/1000
   Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World, a 1966 BBC television film with Vivian Pickles as the American dancer.
18. **Altered States** — score 0/1000
   A 1980 science-fiction film from Paddy Chayefsky's novel in which William Hurt, in his film debut, plays a scientist experimenting with sensory deprivation.
19. **Lisztomania** — score 0/1000
   A 1975 fantasy about Franz Liszt with Roger Daltrey in the title role and Ringo Starr as the Pope.
20. **Billion Dollar Brain** — score 0/1000
   A 1967 spy film from Len Deighton's novel with Michael Caine in his third appearance as Harry Palmer.
21. **Song of Summer** — score 0/1000
   A 1968 BBC Omnibus film about the last years of Frederick Delius (Max Adrian) and his amanuensis Eric Fenby (Christopher Gable).
22. **Crimes of Passion** — score 0/1000
   A 1984 thriller with Kathleen Turner as a designer who works nights as China Blue and Anthony Perkins as a street preacher.
23. **The Lair of the White Worm** — score 0/1000
   A 1988 horror comedy loosely based on Bram Stoker's novel, with Amanda Donohoe, Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi.

Tags: movies, directors, uk, british cinema, ken russell