Savage Messiah is a 1972 film directed by Ken Russell and written by Christopher Logue.
It is a biopic of the artist and sculptor Henri Gaudier, based on the nonfiction book of the same name by H.S. Ede. It mostly focuses on Henri's (Scott Antony) intense but mostly platonic relationship with the writer Sophie Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin) in the years leading up to World War I.
Helen Mirren plays Gosh Boyle. Michael Gough appears briefly as Henri's father.
Savage Messiah contains examples of:
- Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: Henri is telling his friend that he wants to pick up some women, specifically "...really fantastic women. Big, fleshy, breasty, sexy, man-eating—". Cue Helen Mirren who fits that description, as Gosh Boyle, asking Henri for a light.
- "Begone" Bribe: When Henri sexually harasses Sophie, she gives him five shillings and tells him to find a prostitute.
- Bourgeois Bohemian: Gosh. She plays at being a suffragette, making loud and theatrical "Votes for Women" protests. Later, she's an enthusiastic nude model for Henri. But it's clear that she really just wants attention, and at the start of World War I she joins up for a women's auxiliary corps.
- Creator Cameo: Ken Russell can be seen as a passenger getting off a train.
- Cute, but Cacophonic; Gosh Boyle. She's drop-dead gorgeous but a beyond terrible singer, as shown when she sings a little suffragette ditty at a nightclub.
- Downer Ending: Henri is killed fighting in France in 1915.
- Extra! Extra! Read All About It!: How Henri finds out that the Germans are bearing down on Paris, August 1914.
- High-Class Glass: Gosh's father is a cavalry officer, and an absurd parody of a Colonel Blimp-type. He completes the package with a monocle.
- Horrible Housing: After Henri and Sophie move to London, they live in a miserable basement room where Sophie is constantly kept awake by all the noises from outside.
- I Was Quite a Looker: When Henri is first moving into Sophie's garret she says she wishes she could have met him 20 years ago, and that back then she was pretty and had admirers.
- Mistaken for Romance: At first Henri and Sophie stay with Henri's family in the French countryside, but then Sophie is reported to the mayor as a foreigner involved in the 'improper reception' of men. Sophie is evicted from the district for this crime, even though, as she says, she doesn't like sex.
- Molotov Cocktail: Gosh Boyle (Helen Mirren) asks Henri to light her cigarette, which turns out to be the fuse of a Molotov cocktail. She throws it into the square and yells, 'Votes for women!'
- Platonic Life-Partners: Henri and Sophie change their last names to Gaudier-Brzeska, live together for most of the movie, hug and kiss, and declare their love for each other multiple times, but never have sex.
- Platonic Prostitution: Henri hires prostitutes both for the usual purpose and to serve as models.
- Starving Artist: Henri and Sophie live in poverty during their time together. Sophie never manages to get any of her work published.
- Street Musician: At one point Sophie stands with a group of other beggars, singing along while a man plays the violin. She also holds a baby doll to look more sympathetic.
- Streetwalker: Henri goes to one after Sophie refuses him sex. He winds up making drawings of her.
- This Is My Chair: The protagonists first meet when Sophie accuses Henri of sitting in her spot at the library. Henri tells her that this is a public library with no reserved seats and tells her to sit in the other chair. Sophie shoves Henri's books and papers aside with her basket. Henri moves into the other seat.
