as fun as it is to see ken russell going balls to the wall in the devils (especially now that the film has been restored and uncensored after 55 years), there's something equally enjoyable about watching russell work within the confines of the bbc to put over a true story of lusty, drug-addicted, and promiscuous painters, poets, and models.

oliver reed certainly did make the camera his slave, as russell once said; as the titular dante gabriel rossetti, he is by turns boyish, bombastic, peevish, haunted, pathetic, sexy, and mournful. a snake crawls over his open eye and he barely blinks. reed was 29 years old here and could conjure up sexual chemistry with anyone and anything.

it's actually difficult for me to watch this film in 2026 and not see it as an eerie vision of the career and personal struggles reed himself would go on to have in the decades to come, as his own addiction (to alcohol) and at-times brutal petulance circumscribed his ability to work.

see this review on letterboxd.