British Film Director Ken Russell Dies

Ken Russell, the flamboyant and controversial director of The Devils, Altered States, and The Who's rock opera Tommy, died Sunday. He was 84.

A onetime television documentary filmmaker, Russell came to prominence with his 1969 film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love.

The film, infamous for a nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates, won Glenda Jackson the Academy Award for Best Actress and earned Russell his only Oscar nomination for Best Director.

Russell was never afraid to push boundaries, as he went one step further in his next film, The Devils, where Vanessa Redgrave's Sister Jeanne passionately kisses Jesus.

"What distinguished him from the general run of British director, including some famous ones like Carol Reed and David Lean, was that he had a tremendous flair for flamboyance and fantasy, rich in self-indulgence and a lot of overheated imagery, wrote Peter Rainer, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor.

The peak of his career was the star-studded film adaptation of The Who's rock opera Tommy. In one scene, Ann-Margaret, as the pinball wizard's mother, suffers a nervous breakdown, resulting in surreal sequence where she's rolling in baked beans, bubbles, and melted chocolate after throwing a champagne bottle into a TV set.

However, with the decline of the counter-culture of the late '60s and '70s, so did Russell's star power. Rainer added, "I think people felt, rightly or wrongly, that Russell had sort of played out his shtick."

In recent years, Russell was more known for his cantankerous behavior, requesting money for interviews and directing low-budget features like 2002's The Fall of the Louse of Usher. However, the "enfant terrible" will always be remembered for his contribution to modern British film. "Among many achievements that spring to mind, he made British cinema less insular and self-referential," critic Norman Lebrecht wrote in ArtsJournal.

Watch the original 1975 trailer for Tommy below: