2freensel I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

gavin6942 The battle of the sexes and relationships among the elite of Britian's industrial Midlands in the 1920s. Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed) and Rupert Berkin (Alan Bates) are best friends who fall in love with a pair of sisters: Gudrun the sculptress (Glenda Jackson) and Ursula the schoolteacher (Jennie Linden).I just wanted to mention the nude wrestling scene. Wow. To have this in a film is pretty incredible, but then to have it with a notable actor (Reed) is even more incredible. A bold move for everyone involved.The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film, an honor they discontinued in 1973 when it occurred to everyone that this makes no sense.

ShootingShark Gudrun and Ursula are sisters in England in the early twentieth century. Ursula is in love with the free-thinking Rupert, whilst Gudrun is attracted to the wealthy Gerald. Will the two couples be happy together ?Ken Russell passed away recently. He was a great filmmaker and this, his second feature, illustrates his incredible visual talent. He breaks away from the dull traditional reverence when adapting literary classics, instead ramping up every scene as much as possible with pictorial flair, music, movement, sexual tension, shouting - anything to make the film as dramatic as possible. He succeeds with some fine moments. like the scene where Gudrun bewitches the Highland Cattle, or the infamous nude wrestling match between Bates and Reed, but there is a fundamental problem and that's the novel by D.H. Lawrence, the plot of which is in my view quite staggeringly dull. Rupert wants a bisexual lifestyle, Gudrun doesn't want to be tied down to anyone, Gerald wants a wife to dominate and Ursula just wants to be loved. They all pontificate endlessly about how they feel, which is about the least cinematic a story can get, so it's amazing that despite this Russell manages to make his film so arresting, filled with evocative shots of the beautiful countryside. Like The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and Eyes Wide Shut, this is a interesting movie about sexual morality based on very dull source material, but is well worth seeing for its visual flair alone. Nicely shot by Billy Williams in rural northern England and at Zermatt in Switzerland (that majestic mountain is the famous Matterhorn), and written and produced by noted playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer. Trivia - Jackson plays a scene where she pretends to be Antonina Miliukova (Tchaikovsky's wife), whom she played in Russell's subsequent The Music Lovers, and went on to appear as her character's mother in Russell's 1989 film The Rainbow.

michaelmross D.H. Lawrence's supreme novel gets a superior Ken Russell treatment - and, just because the novel is such a great work of art, the film succeeds in conveying a portion of that greatness on a celluloid canvas. Russell's work must be commended for its workmanlike faithfulness to the story and its lack of pretentiousness. The film captures some of the luminous imagery that makes the novel so vivid and beautiful - the wrestling scene is bold and brilliant, there's no denying. But the movie cannot capture the novel's scope, its genius, its feeling of immanence and exultation. The question is, could anyone have done better than this? It seems surprising that no one else has tried... or maybe it isn't, given the stature of this book. What you have in this well-made movie is a memento of a monumental novel. It's akin to seeing pictures of a great vacation - you simply need to visit the place before you've truly been there.

Lee Eisenberg At first glance, Ken Russell's "Women in Love" may look like one of the many movies exploring the new permissiveness of the silver screen (and in fact it got released around the same time as "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice"). But it is also important to pay attention to its focus on England's class system. In my opinion, probably the most effective scene is during the opening credits, as Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) and Ursula Brangwen (Jennie Lind) - both dressed in fancy aristocratic clothes - walk through an economically depressed neighborhood, barely if at all moved by the poverty surrounding them. Of course, it's hard not to remember Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates) and Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed) fighting each other. That scene probably goes to show the falsity of the rich English lifestyle: they act like these refined individuals, but the whole time they're ready to explode. Back when D.H. Lawrence wrote the novel, he probably never guessed that the movie would look like this.All in all, this is certainly one that I recommend. I often say that the period from about 1967 to 1973 saw some of the greatest movies released, and this backs that up. Also starring Eleanor Bron (the woman in "Help!") and Michael Gough (Alfred in the Batman movies from 1989 to 1997).I've never heard of people cutting open figs and eating only the inside. I've always just eaten the whole fig.