Martin Bradley Ken Russell's overly precious screen version of the D H Lawrence novel "Women in Love" is all tactile sensuality and much naked abandonment, not to mention a hell of a lot of high flautin' dialogue courtesy of producer Larry Kramer. It was a huge hit when it came out, (the nudity may have helped sell it), and won the then unknown Glenda Jackson an Oscar as Best Actress. The problem I have with her, and indeed everyone else for that matter, is they aren't playing flesh and blood people but just aspects of Lawrence. There are several great set-pieces that might convince you that you are watching a real film and it's superbly photographed by Billy Williams but ultimately it's a very patchy piece of work that just doesn't live up to its reputation.

bethlambert117 Can you imagine the effect this movie had in 1969? I is still ahead of the times. Merit, in great part, of Larry Kramer who adapted DH Lawrence's work in a way nobody else could have. Scrumptious, subversive, extraordinary. Director Ken Russell with some startling titles to his name - his BBC production of Isadora Duncan with a sublime Vivien Pickles in the title role, for instance - reaches here some kind of mountain top. Glenda Jackson became a household name, Alan Bates confirmed what we all knew, that he was one of the greatest actors that ever lived. I devoured the film with utter pleasure 48 years after its first released. Literature and cinema in an insanely beautiful alliance.

The_Film_Cricket I am sort of ashamed to admit that I am not that familiar with Glenda Jackson's work. In fact, I've only seen two of her films, Women in Love and A Touch of Class – the two films for which she won Oscars – and while I (obviously) liked her work in the first, I did not like her much in the second. In Women in Love she is intelligent and sexually free without keeping us at arm's length but in A Touch of Class she is sexually free but grates on my nerves.Yet in Ken Russell's film, she has an endearing spark as the unfortunately named Gudrud Brangwen (pronounced Goo-Drud), a woman in 1920s British high society who spends her days with her sister Ursula (the wonderful Jennie Linden) discussing the promises and the qualities of love. Watching the wedding of a naval officer, their eyes lock on two good-looking chaps in the wedding party. Jennie spots the free-wheeling Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates) while Gudrud focuses on the stiff but handsome Gerald Critch (Oliver Reed). Soon they are locked in passionate love affairs with their respective men but their personalities bring about different results.Gerald loves Gudrud's fiery passion but she admits that he really doesn't know how to love her. He is full of anger and frustration and doesn't really understand her. Gudrud is a woman with personality and intelligence whose sexuality is surprisingly frank, but she is also sexually liberated in the head. Not content to just be taken, she wants to be made love to mentally as well as physically. She's very smart, her mind is open where Gerald's is not. She penetrates right to his inner weakness and it is a trait he cannot deal with. He can't give her a proper kind of passionate love (there are minor indications that Gerald is privately in love with Rupert).Jackson is not classically beautiful. She has a bony face with an odd-shaped mouth and large teeth. I think that works in her favor because she looks like a real person rather than the cover of a magazine. She is that rare actress who is always in the moment – when she isn't speaking she's listening. She is also the best thing about Women in Love, a movie I'm not terribly passionate about. Director Russell experiments with weird visual styles, as in several sex scenes involving Ursula and Rupert; one of which he films sideways and the other he intercuts with the dead bodies of a couple who have drowned. For these reason, and for the film's often deadening pace, Women in Love is more or less forgotten. It isn't a bad film but were it not for the performances, especially by Glenda Jackson, it would have completely faded into obscurity.All through the 70s, a new kind of woman would emerge, born from the women's movement. There would be a great many actresses who would find a new kind of voice in film. If you look carefully at the women who won the Oscar as Best Actress (and a great deal who were nominated), you will find that nearly all of them – Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Ellen Burstyn, Faye Dunaway, and Sally Field (Louise Fletcher doesn't really count), played women either struggling to find their own voice or who were expressing themselves intellectually and sexually. None did a better job then Jackson who managed to play a character who is intelligent, liberated but doesn't keep us at arms length. She was a new kind of character, one whose life goal isn't to land in the arms of a man because she has to, but simply because she wants to.

moonspinner55 Lunatic director Ken Russell and screenwriter Larry Kramer, adapting D. H. Lawrence's battle-of-the-sexes novel, give us two portraits of passion in "Women in Love", delineating how some desires can destroy lives while others come to be expected (usually by those who take love--or the romantic act of love--for granted). Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden play close sisters in 1920s England who are curious about sex, though one may be searching for a semblance of true love while her sibling isn't so old-fashioned--she sees sex as a conquest. Russell isn't interested in character content as much as he is in creating a gorgeous-looking picture...and, indeed, this is a marvelous-looking piece of work. However, there isn't very much emotion in the narrative (not even under the surface), rendering the final tragic events cold, maybe even indifferent. The performances from the ladies are good, if not convincing; Jackson did win a Best Actress Oscar, but Alan Bates and Oliver Reed are more compelling as the men in their lives. The scenario is sexually-charged, but not with passion--the lust is always undercut with anger. The nudity and caressing images aren't even that erotic because the film is so aloof, with conflicts that aren't investigated and dialogue that doesn't reveal personality. **1/2 from ****