Women in Love |  | Director: Ken Russell
Actors: Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson, Jennie Linden, Eleanor Bron
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
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Rating:  34 reviews
Sales Rank: 18490
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 131 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.1 x 0.6
MPN: D1004345D
ISBN: 0792855000
UPC: 027616884275
EAN: 9780792855002
ASIN: B00007KQA1
Theatrical Release Date: March 25, 1970
Release Date: March 4, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com essential video
Before director Ken Russell's name became synonymous with cinematic extravagance and overkill, he actually directed what is one of the most passionate and involving adaptations of D.H. Lawrence in recent memory. Oliver Reed and Alan Bates star as friends who fall in love with a pair of sisters (Jennie Linden and Glenda Jackson, who won an Oscar for the role). But the relationships take markedly different directions, as Russell explores the nature of commitment and love. Bates and Linden learn to give themselves to each other; the more withdrawn Reed cannot, finally, connect with the demanding and challenging Jackson. Shot with great sensuality, it was surprisingly frank for its period (1970) and includes one of the most charged scenes in movie history: Bates and Reed as manly men, wrestling nude by firelight. --Marshall Fine
Description
This compelling rendition of the literary masterpiece is a visual stunner and very likely the mostsensuous film ever made (N.Y. Daily News). Glenda Jackson garnered the first of her two Oscars®* for her superb performance in director Ken Russell and writer Larry Kramer's brilliant exploration of the complexities of sexuality and romantic love. Growing up in the sheltered society of 1920s England, Gudrun (Jackson) and Ursula (Jennie Linden) know little about the ways of love. So when they pursue thrilling, torrid affairs with a notorious playboy (Alan Bates) and abrooding philanderer (Oliver Reed), what they discover about their lovers, and themselves, may be more all-consumingand dangerously volatilethan they ever dared imagine.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
 Quitre disappointing 40 years later March 7, 2010
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
The title is revealing but probably misguiding. One woman who is drowning will drown her own husband who is trying to rescue her: possessiveness in death. She took him to paradise. The second wants total submission in the two partners and she castrates her husband of his desire to have a friend, a male friend. The third one wants to absolutely possess her partner but she also wants to be able to flutter around. Her man will end up killing himself in the mountain since he could not get over her the complete possession she had over him. In other words it is a bleak world and even a sad world. There is no hope for love, real love. Love is nothing but a trap in which the human rats we are accept to survive in order to have a social dimension and a domestic comfort we would not have otherwise. With age this film that used to be a cult film when it came out has become a rather trite story. I remember watching it in 1973 or so in Davis, California. It was on campus a film appreciated by women in the name of a certain vision of women's liberation, and by gays for the vision of male friendship between two men. I am quite disappointed today with the feeling I have just watched a piece of ancient anthropological discovery.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
 WOMEN IN LOVE October 28, 2009
Arthur Lancelot (Rio de Janeiro, RJ BRAZIL)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Very seldom has a movie been such a faithful adaptation from the book it was based on. That is the case of WOMEN IN LOVE,a wonderful and perfect movie with settings, performances, and plot that are worth seeing. As far as its plot is concerned, WOMEN IN LOVE is a philosophical experiment on what love actually is and on the role it plays in human life. Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen,marvelously played by Glenda Jackson and Jeannie Linden,are the two sisters who go by the several phases love can show itself, many of which are awfully pleasant whereas others bring sorrow and uncertainty. They get married to Rupert Birkin and Gerald Crich (Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in outstanding performances as well), who are two close friends who seem to have different conceptions of true love at first, but in the long run they turn out to have different outlooks on the meaning of true love even beteween two men, which brings out in Gerald a feeling of insecurity and a lack of self-acceptance.
What is really challenging about D.H.Lawrence's book WOMEN IN LOVE and Ken Russell's brilliant screen version is the possibility of true love not only between people of opposite sexes but also between people of the same sex.
In Lawrence's bold point of view (mainly for the time he lived in),love is love, regardless of the sex of one's object of love. The closing scene of the movie, a truly faithful adaptation from the book, shows the impact of Rupert Birkin's words both on his wife and possibly on some viewers. However, nobody can deny the beauty both the book and the film provide, and the anthological and symbolical scene of the fight between Rupert and Gerald, which takes place in the chapter of the book named GLADIATORIAL,is far above any possible prejudice that can derive, since it shows nothing but the possibility of love, a feeling whose absolute absence would already have done away with the whole world. A true masterpiece!
Arguably, Russell's best film July 15, 2009
klavierspiel (TX, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ken Russell's film output was intensely controversial in his heyday, some of his work winning wide acclaim and some almost universal scorn and condemnation. "Women in Love," one of his earliest full-length, big-budget features, stands out today as one of his best, an intelligent, good-looking and well-acted adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's sprawling novel about sexual and emotional relationships between men and women, and men and men, in 1920s England, personified by the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula (Glenda Jackson, Jennie Linden), and their respective lovers, Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed)and Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates).
The screenplay by Larry Kramer remains a model of cinematic adaptation, minimizing the long-winded philosophizing into which the author's print characters are wont to fall, though the necessity for condensation means the plot proceeds onscreen in a series of self-contained tableaux rather than a smooth progression. This works because the individual episodes are so memorable, most carrying an emotional immediacy that take the viewer's breath away even today. Chief among these, of course, is the notorious nude fireside wrestling scene between Bates and Reed, which has lost none of its homoerotic charge. However, other scenes are equally striking: Jackson stampeding a herd of cattle with Isadora Duncan-style dancing; a mischievous nude swim by two young newlyweds that abruptly turns tragic; Reed trudging wearily through the vast expanse of the snowy Alps. Russell's propensity for over-the-top grandiosity is eminently suited to the material here; later it would all too often veer into self-caricature. The actors, including the underrated Jennie Linden, throw themselves with complete identification into their roles, in the process often saving Lawrence from himself. Glenda Jackson's portrayal of the headstrong and relentlessly critical Gudrun is particularly memorable and her Oscar was well-deserved. Bates and Reed are equally good, though the latter is physically quite unlike the character as described by the author. Together they strike enough sparks amid the beautiful cinematography to keep "Women in Love" an absorbing film experience after four decades.
The current DVD looks great, with the lush colors of the original well preserved, though the sound quality was uneven in one or two spots on my copy. The extra features are minimal--voice-overs by both Russell and Kramer, an amusingly stuffy contemporary trailer (which limits itself mostly to placards with critical quotes), and a photo gallery. No matter, as the film speaks for itself.
Women in Love January 26, 2009
Ronald J. Coldbeck (Australia)
An excellent movie. Superb acting by some wonderful actors.
Oliver Reed and Alan Bates brilliant and Glenda Jackson superb.
I am glad I purchased this memorable movie.
 Great performances but dated August 8, 2008
R. Swanson (New Mexico)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
The performances are first rate: Glenda Jackson certainly deserved her Oscar, Alan Bates is always wonderful and Oliver Reed captures your heart by his very presence. The story is filled with the personal obsessions that drove Lawrence--finding some sort of truth in physical passion being the most obvious one. This film adaptation is hardly subtle--driving the same ideas home again and again---starting with the lesson of the parts of the flower in the opening schoolroom scene. Then there's the famous picnic scene where Alan Bates likens the fig to a woman's sexual part. Then there are all of explicit love scenes, including the nude male wrestling by the firelight scene between Bates and Reed.
I guess all of this was pretty hot stuff when the film was made, but it strikes me as almost silly at this point in time. Likewise the dialogue, discussing over and over the nature of love stikes me as way overly ponderous. Especially because no one solved any of their problems that way. I guess that's one of Lawrence's demons--over intellectualizing and then trying to compensate by some sort of physical activity, mainly sex. I'm sure many others have analyzed Lawrence's psyche endlessly so I won't bother, here, except to mention that the incredibly creepy mother of the Reed character certainly bears attention.
The cinematography is great, the costumes are good, the English countryside and shots in Zermatt are beautiful. There's a lot of entertainment value in the film if you don't take it too seriously. Ken Russell did, and obviously most of the readers here did too.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 34
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