"...all art is sex!"

Recently I watched Savage Messiah, which I'd never seen, and it got some things ticking along in my head alongside some other things that relate to the First World War. I also realize I haven't seen very much Ken Russell, even though The Devils (which I haven't seen in many years, and only once) is stuck in my mind as one of the very greatest films ever.

Not that I think Savage Messiah is a great film, but it's certainly interesting, and part of why it's so (nearly fifty years on) is how visibly it filters its imagination of WWI-era modernism back through the concerns and kinks and beauties of '60s-'70s British culture and transnational hip subcultures. Fellini- and Blow Up-style swinging parties form webs with the drive to break through, and to resist a thousand admonitions from Mom & Dad, or King & Country, or whatever, but there's a sad fatalism to all of it too ...