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Savage Messiah

1972

Every man has a dream that must be realised... a love that must come true... a life that must not stop.

In the Paris of the 1910s, brash young sculptor Henri Gaudier begins a creative partnership with an older writer, Sophie Brzeska. Though the couple is 20 years apart in age, Gaudier finds that his untamed work is complemented by the older woman's cultural refinement. He then moves to London with Brzeska, where he falls in with a group of avant-garde artists. There, Gaudier encounters yet another artistic muse in passionate suffragette Gosh Boyle.

Dorothy Tutin Scott Antony Helen Mirren Lindsay Kemp Michael Gough John Justin Aubrey Richards Peter Vaughan Ben Aris Eleanor Fazan Otto Diamant Imogen Claire Maggy Maxwell Susanna East Judith Paris Robert Lang Harry Fielder Howard Goorney Alexei Jawdokimov Sidney Kean Paul McDowell Alex Russell Ken Russell David Warwick Henry Woolf

Alternative Titles

O Messias Selvagem, Livets galskab, El Mesías salvaje, Nuori Messias, Le messie sauvage, Otan i floga kaiei, Barbár messiás, Messia selvaggio, Dziki mesjasz, O Rebelde Genial, Divlji Mesija, Divoký Mesiáš, El mesías salvaje, Месията дивак, Дикий мессия, 野蛮救世主, Le Messie sauvage, Dziki Mesjasz

Genre

Drama

Theatrical

27 Jun 1972

Portugal

14 Sep 1972

01 Oct 1972

USAR

10 Apr 1973

Denmark

24 Apr 1973

SwedenBtl

Denmark

10 Apr 1973

Theatrical

Portugal

27 Jun 1972

Theatrical

Sweden

24 Apr 1973

TheatricalBtl

UK

14 Sep 1972

Theatrical Certificaton: X

USA

01 Oct 1972

TheatricalR

103 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★ 9

i bet you’re expecting me to make this review about helen mirren’s bush huh well i’m not gonna do it i said i’m not gonna do it
Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★ 4

Ken Russell is a heck of a director. On one hand you know what to expect from him, on the other hand, you don't. His movies crosses genres but also it crosses reality. Most of his movie settings are familiar, yet they are spin in a 180 madness that has you wonder what the heck you've seen. In the case of this movie, Russell goes and blends some of the surrealism and nihilism you will expect both of him but also a Fellini or a Hal Ashby, especially 8 1/2 or Harold and Maude.
Dorothy Tutin and Scott Antony as true characters Sophie Brzeska and Henri Gaudier respectively, with their in and out chemistry and zanny nature, libertine spirit makes…
Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★½

"People who are always talking about enemies are my enemy"
Henri Gaudier (Scott Antony), a brash young sculptor, forges a deep bond with Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin), a writer a few decades his senior. Though their relationship remains platonic, a desire for more roils beneath the surface, simultaneously tormenting them and fuelling their creativity.
Ken Russell's Savage Messiah uses the lynchpin of an unorthodox relationship to explore the importance of art more broadly. Henri is a consummate showman. An extrovert who enjoys being the centre of attention and tends toward making grand proclamations about the nature of what is or isn't worthwhile contributions to the art world. Though she's every bit as eccentric, Sophie tempers his brash, youthful cockiness with…
Review by comrade_yui ★★★★★ 9

genius, unrefined genius, no qualifiers, no authorities, the power and shape of art, POWER, manic struggle, shaping the stone and breaking it and breaking yourself and the world's war, sex and death streaming forth like careless lions into the dusty underbelly of paris, there's dust there because art is in the making, not the ideal, but the idea made flesh like the body of christ because his body is the aesthetic body transfigured transliterated trampling over its own clumsy steps badly, you're embarrassing, you're a legend, you're both savior and demon of this fallen age without heroes, what they need is a vision and you tear out your eyes and your soul and offer to them and they'll only love…
Review by noir1946 ★★ 2

“I know you’re a genius because I’m a genius, too.”
Savage Messiah is one of Ken Russell’s flops, but I seem to remember the auteur saying somewhere that it was his favorite of his films. His account of the tumultuous relationship between artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) and writer Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska (1872-1925) is typical of Ken’s attempts, mostly successful, to show what makes artists tick. It’s full of inspiration, passion, pain, and disappointment—with a little sex. I enjoyed it up until the protagonists left Paris for London, when Ken lets his love of excess become a bit carried away. And when Ken becomes excessive, hide the women and children and lock all the livestock in the barn. Despite these excesses, however,…
Review by Liz ★★★½

Kind of an outlier in that crazed run from The Devils through Lisztomania, but Russell's portrait of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska is no less maniacally ambitious than those other films. Here, that energy expresses itself not in artificial visuals or booming music, but in the arch performances by Tutin and Antony, who take a literal jackhammer to what could've otherwise been a dull or overly dramatic biopic. This is a dirty, earthy movie, but that feels true to its subjects and their environment -- when Russell's trademark visuals finally do make an appearance at posh (Jarman-designed) nightclub, the contrast couldn't be any more striking.
Review by Ford H ★★★½

Do you think a romantic relationship between a sculptor and a writer would last, especially with all that clanking?
Not saying anyone gets murdered or goes full Jack Torrance, but I just had that thought.
Anyway, fun movie. Lots of frenzied personalities. Great acting.
Review by Frances Meh ★★★★

we used to be a proper country where a man could achieve artistic greatness on pilfered cemetery stones, a diet of leeks and herring, and the platonic affections of a polish lady twice his age retvrn
Review by teamgal ★★★

The production elements can't be faulted: Dick Pope's cinematography, Derek Jarman's sets, Shirley Russell's costumes, all work to create an impressively mounted period piece. But, unfortunately, director Ken Russell overplays his hand here — there's no pause, no breathing room, and the endless parade of hysteria becomes tiresome. There's not a moment when anything is dialed down and, somehow, the film feels pedestrian. Conversely, it never jumps into visionary overdrive, the way something like THE MUSIC LOVERS does. Pity that, as the final ten minutes — an elegant ballet between Russell's camera and Gaudier-Brzeska's sculptures — are absolutely brilliant.
Ken Russell, ranked
Review by Kaleb ★★★

This is just one of those movies that doesn’t really work for me. I thought the acting was great, and the film looked great, however I just didn’t connect with the story. I wasn’t all too fond of the characters, therefore it was difficult to care. This could be do to narrative issues, since the actors did an awesome job. It’s strange, and witty and seems like it would’ve been up my alley but not every film is gonna work.
Review by theironcupcake ★★★★ 2

"You said, and don't you dare tell me I'm wrong, that today's art cannot be made from anything except today!"
"And where do you think today comes from, huh? Yesterday. Or do you see some clean break along the line of days stretching back from here to Babylon?"
"Look, you never say the same thing twice, boy. You change all the time."
"Yes, I change. When I lie down at night it's as if I'm going to die. When I get up in the morning, I get up as if I'm going to live forever."
Savage Messiah is far from the flashiest of Ken Russell's artist biopics, but it is surely one of his most underrated, emotionally affecting productions. Scott…
Review by Callisto ★★★ 2

Ken Russell Ranked
I really love the horizontal poster that has the tagline "...all art is sex!" And here is a picture of Ken Russell standing in front of this horizontal poster in 2009, just two years before his death, at a screening in Belfast.
When I saw my first few Russell films, I said to myself, Ooh, Savage Messiah looks interesting. I'd like to see a messiah who's also a savage! And then I found out it's a biography about a sculptor. So I put off watching it. It's such a cool title that I wonder how many people got tricked into watching just for that without reading any description.
The best words I could say won't compare to…

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Savage Messiah

Synopsis

Every man has a dream that must be realised... a love that must come true... a life that must not stop.

Cast

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Language

Alternative Titles

Genre

Theatrical

27 Jun 1972

14 Sep 1972

01 Oct 1972

10 Apr 1973

24 Apr 1973

Denmark

10 Apr 1973

Portugal

27 Jun 1972

Sweden

24 Apr 1973

UK

14 Sep 1972

USA

01 Oct 1972

Popular reviews

Director

Producers

Writer

Original Writer

Editor

Cinematography

Assistant Director

Camera Operator

Additional Photography

Art Direction

Set Decoration

Composer

Sound

Costume Design

Makeup

Hairstyling