Salome's Last Dance

source: Salome's Last Dance

For a film made on a shoe string budget, one learns one too many a lesson; my favorite is the conception concerning the Baptist's voice coming up from his dungeon: with fumes and a greenish light coming out of a Carpenter film, this demonstrated how the latter should profit from this for his metaphysics and his camp. There is a lot too appreciate here, in the Ruskin sense of the word; do not be fooled by either the budget or the fart side of the scale, this is a very, very shrewd and sly reading of Wilde: his Salome and this Salome open up the new category of camp repression, with the film deliciously showing us that an author can be terribly indifferent to his work (especially when eager to amass all the boyish charm of a golden ass in his palm), a peculiar brand of catholic believer, Saint Oscar (Guy Fawkes Night is a great touch for this matter), that England is a brothel or only a brothel would have the courage to stage the banned play while at the same time entertain by its cast the imagination of its maker - and this is valid also for us: we are strangely moved in the end after all this extravagance. Even if at some point Wilde exclaims that he should not bother his imagination with the proceedings implying that it is a sin and a hubris to pass imagination through a trial (sic), and with this and other witticisms and intuitions Ken Russell's framing device makes Oscar Wilde a character escaping from his play into the brutal rebuttal of the public and its mores as voiced by Glenda Jackson's Lady/Herodias "it was not murder, but a banana slip!"(Watch how one of Russell's signature modes, the camp, exaggerated close-up of Jackson's exclaiming the phrase echoes the one in the beginning just before the show starts on Wilde's champagne glass.) In the feverish, camp theater of his mind, Salome, impish (great acting by the half blind, puckish Imogen Millais-Scott), precocious, looking so much like her mother (Herodias AND Lady Wilde??), she is the author's stand in - or is it he hers, as the Bosie/Baptist reversal also implies (and is so blandly delivered in the end)? The murder/ banana slip line surely reaches into what last century was called Wilde's self-destructive element but also Russell's wild comment on himself. Through this kind of fictional biography Russell's intuitive violence reaches after even the pivotal Wildean witticism "all bad poetry is sincere" and, somehow, poses it on its head. We are strangely moved in the end.

I know that Ken Russel was put under fire so to speak from the critics for his scatological portrayal of the play "Salome", however, this is one version of the play that people just don't forget. With shocking yet theatrical effects, it captures the mysterious and intriguing mood of the play, pouring drama. I mean, I watched the Opera version of Salome...and...needless to say, it had me wishing I was watching the movie instead of the opera!

This film is actually an Oscar Wilde's stage play adaptation on film, so it won't appeal easily to ordinary film-buffs. This plus its controversial subject matter (commentary on religions, naughty humour, study of seducing, nudity), the old-fashioned style & dialogues will propably turn down many. Their loss. Ken Russel is for once more intelligent and even though a bit unreasonably obsessive with some key-phrases of Salome, his trademark visual style are still evident in this one as well. So, this ain't only for Ken Russel's fans, but also to any lover of true cinema. In these years of Hollywood films, it's not violence or nudity itself that offends. It's the way they are presented. In a typical Hollywood flick nudity (female, of course) as well as violence is shown to make the viewer feel better. In 'Salome's last dance', this is not the case, because its way is not something you're used to.

Poor Oscar Wilde must sit and watch his play "Salome" performed by the inhabitants of a brothel. Russell occasionally turned out some fine films like "Women in Love," but all too often he made films that reflected his bad taste and cheesy style. This is perhaps the most dreadful movie he ever made. From the look of it, it was probably made for a budget of about $1.98. The acting is uniformly awful. The sets are cardboard cutouts. The costumes look like they came from a rummage sale. These sins could have been overlooked if the film managed to be entertaining in some way, but it's a plodding bore featuring dull dialog and a non-existent plot.

Oscar Wilde's play "Salome" is staged within this movie as Wilde himself looks on from a couch in a male brothel. I cannot determine if Wilde's play is a bomb, or whether it is this amateurish production that is such. I have rarely been as irritated by a performance as that of Imogen Millais-Scott in her portrayal of Salome. I was grossly put off by her constant mugging. And after a dozen or so times of her saying, "I want to kiss your mouth, John the Baptist," I felt that if she were to say it again, I would scream. She did, and I did. How Glenda Jackson wound up in this mess is a puzzle. What a waste. Nickolas Grace plays Wilde as a walking and talking epigram machine with no depth. Compare his Wilde with Stephen Fry's in "Wilde" and you will see how paltry Grace's performance is. Douglas Hodge, looking eerily like the late-stage Michael Jackson, plays John the Baptist (in the "Salome" play) with an overwrought energy that gets on your nerves. I felt like cheering when Glenda Jackson said, "Shut him up." If you find flatulence and belching humorous, then parts of this film will entertain you. If not, be warned that that is how desperate things get. The music is a hodgepodge of overworked classical pieces. After the play within the movie ends we see tears coming to Wilde's eyes. I could not figure out if he was thinking, "God, did I actually write that horrible thing," or "That was so bad as to make one cry." I have to give this a star for the sheer spectacle of it - I give it credit for being uniquely imagined. And another star for the dance scene, even though a "body double" was used for the crucial climax. In summary, I quote Glenda Jackson's exhortation to members of the cast, "Shut them up, they bore me."

Sick, twisted, bizarre, blasphemous, shocking, and perverse. In short, everything I look for in a Ken Russell movie. The 'professionial' critics really missed the point on this one.

Shocking. Revolting. Human. Those three words may sound like the description of a flop, but in reality those words describe the brilliance of this movie. Set in a theater-stage atmosphere akin to Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, this movie sucks you in to a devilish plot dripping with intrigue. It leaves you feeling a bit dirty, too, like you've had a secret fling behind your spouse' back. Glenda Jackson ("Herodius") absolutely shines in this production; a temptress of the same flavor as Joan Collins in Dallas. If I had four hands, this movie would get all four thumbs up. (Not for the squeamish - or the uppity prude). Important notes: contrary to the false comments made by other people here about this film... The actress playing Salome is indeed a FEMALE - Imogen Millais-Scott - not a male in drag. Furthermore, some have said that the movie made a discrepancy by having Oscar Wilde arrested for "sexual crimes" on Guy Faulks Day (the day of the movie's setting) when in fact he was not arrested on that day - the actual truth being that the arrest in the film WAS FICTIONAL... in this movie he is arrested with everyone else in the brothel because the man playing Herod tells the centurion, "Kill that woman!" and he actually hurls a spear at Salome and murders her, and she falls off the stage impaled by the spear and the police find her dead body. As everyone is being tossed into the paddy wagon, Glenda Jackson attempts a defense by saying, "She wasn't murdered! She slipped on a banana peel!"

Oscar Wilde, who wrote the stage play "Salome", was one of the greatest wits of his time, but lived a lifestyle that created continuous controversy in the society in which he lived. Today he is perhaps best known for authorship of "The Ballard of Reading Jail", which was written during one of the times when he was in prison following a direct confrontation with the government of the time. When he wrote "Salome" it was banned for a time by the English stage censorship and, even though it can be a most rewarding performance to watch, stage productions of it are still relatively infrequent. Consequently many people today are more familiar with the bowdlerised opera which was based on the play and was composed by Richard Strauss. The opera has been filmed by at least two major directors, but for the cinematographic enthusiast there is also this very noteworthy film, directed by Ken Russell, which is much more closely based on Wilde's play. In my opinion this film is dramatically far superior to the rather pathetic opera, and is very worth while seeking out by anyone interested. Basically it exploits the psychological tensions which may have existed in King Herod's court, and which could have accounted for the demand by Salome for the head of John the Baptist on a platter; the story that is so baldly reported in the Bible. The scenario of this film is set in a brothel where Oscar Wilde is treated to an illegal birthday performance of his play, acted by friends who include some of the employees of the host establishment. This choice of venue has upset many critics but it is totally irrelevant to the play - it is helpful for a modern viewer to remember that, at the time in which this film is set, Oscar Wilde and his literary friends would meet regularly to present impromptu performances of works they had written, basically as a quality control procedure for the final product they eventually published; and this film simply exploits the practice. It is essentially a film of a play, with the story associated with the presentation of the play added to maintain cinematographic interest. Ken Russell is a controversial director but although the film is not without faults, the overall quality is outstanding, the cast is superb, and there are particularly memorable performances by Glenda Jackson as Queen Herodias and by Imogen Millais-Scott (who shows the capability of looking any age between thirteen and thirty) as Princess Salome. Both the play and the film effectively capture the decadence, which was characteristic of the royal courts of petty despots at this point in history, better than any other works I have seen. It should be a must for anyone who has the opportunity to see it.

This tiresome movie is a gutless snuff film wannabe. Its prancing, simpering misogyny would never have succeeded if it weren't gauzed up with fashionable "sexual preferences." Russell manages neatly to solarize Wilde's Salome, capturing and exaggerating everything in it that is opposite to the elements that make Strauss' Salome one of the great operas. Glib, arch decadence is a steamy, mechanical dead end, and this movie is the deadest. It has all the wit of poop jokes and pornographic caricatures of the Mona Lisa. D. H. Lawrence was contemptuous of decadence. The "marriage" of Lawrence and Russell was a rape, folks. And Lawrence was dead.