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Gelatinous Substances:

3 jellies for Ken Russell’s 1971 trio

by Hannah Ferguson

Movie still from The Devils. A woman leans against a shirtless Jesus with thorns around his head, bleeding.

You cannot make a jelly without first reconciling disgust and delight. You will then need to combine disparate elements to form a discrete whole. These elements can be entirely at odds with each other, strange, pleasing, UV-light sensitive, carbonated, etc. What will hold it all together, however, is gelatin. Derived from collagen—in turn, derived from animal parts such as calf’s foot—gelatin is a gelling agent, its culinary use traceable to the tenth century. In the nineteenth century, gelatin began to be used to suspend silver halide crystals in emulsion for film stock.

When you begin to bloom the gelatin you’ll find it smells almost bodily, visceral; saliva or mucus or some more elusive excretion. This will dissipate with the addition of your other liquid ingredients. Fill your desired mould with the gelatin liquid. Pause along the way to insert fruits, objects, dialogue, colours, set pieces, boiled eggs, and/or fragments into the jelly, building an aspic structure. Pause to chill the jelly incrementally along the way; a colloidal gel will form as it cools, becoming solid.

An aspic jelly is a kind of period piece, suspending matter in time and place, contained / containing, framed / framing. A jelly is kind of self-aware in this way. Like if a montage was paused and reassembled in one frame.

In 1971, Ken Russell released three different films, all period pieces: The Devils, The Music Lovers, and The Boy Friend. 

Most of Russell’s works were period films, many of them biographies of classical music composers. In a Ken Russell period piece, we’re presented with History as a slippery sloshing back and forth between then and now. Mahler’s fifth at full volume and shag haircut anachronisms and fever sweat and an ornate sense of space. Sometimes watching a Ken Russell movie feels like what I imagine a power washer to the brain feels like. Or the rising and falling of salty tides, time-lapsed to ten times the speed. 

Russell is less interested in historical accuracy than an account of a history or moment, a warped kind of period faithfulness that is articulated via expressive excess, hounding the affective experience of, say, when you’re Tchaikovsky and you marry an insane woman so that people would stop thinking you were gay. Or when you’re a nun and you become so carnally obsessed with the local priest you end up ruining his life. Or when you're Twiggy and must understudy the lead role in a full-length Busby Berkeley-style stage extravaganza. 

The throughline between all of Russell’s films is perhaps a manic sensibility as guiding principle. This is what cracks his period pieces open, what makes them really work—when the most beautiful, languid-hazy sequences you've ever seen suddenly turn into something brutal and alien and perverse. Characters are rash and lovesick, incoherent and steely, driven by desire, at cross purposes. Hallucinatory montage is interwoven with theatrical immediacy, like direct address in a windstorm. The very air feels tangible. 

Russell’s period pieces ask us to see the past as strange and unruly, interested in rearranging the ingredients of taste as much as pushing the limits of it—pondering the mouthfeel of witch hunts in seventeenth-century France, or of musical ecstasy in nineteenth-century Russia. His movies are like aspics in this way: intricate and a little off-putting. Where many recent period pieces seem to tread carefully, too self-aware to be genuinely bizarre, Russell finds a kind of transcendence in tastelessness that activates the past.

So here are three gauche little jellies in homage to Russell’s 1971 trio:

Movie still from The Devils. A woman in white stands in front of a group of people, some peasants, some in armor.

The Devils: “blancmange in a flummery mould”

First, boil a disgraced priest’s pelvic bone for ten minutes. If you cannot easily source this, veal knuckles are fine. For this recipe, we suggest, perhaps unconventionally, using a flummery mould for blancmange—ceramic, architectural, tall, and producing a rather kinetic effect when set. We look to Derek Jarman’s set design for instruction: white tile stretching on and on, white brick, abstracted fortifications. The way they warp and reorient forms we at first recognize from "the past" (history, place, feeling). Prepare the mould by not cleaning it at all. Take equal parts cream and ditch water and add to pot. Bring to a simmer. An homage to the early medieval stew iteration will be made in the form of shredded chicken and rice. Add these to the pot, along with a sprinkle of ash. The mixture may now be poured into the flummery mould to set. When ready, hold the dish in your warm hands until you feel it begin to peel away from the edges of the mould. Place on a dish, observe the blancmange and enjoy it while you can. 

Movie still from The Music Lovers. A woman talks to two men who stare at one another at a fancy performance outside in a garden.

The Music Lovers: “stuffed savoury aspic”

Hunt a swan, process it, and boil for a third of an hour. Combine the resulting gelatinous broth with two bottles of champagne leftover from your nuptials, shaken over the course of a train journey. Set some of the broth aside. Do not remove resulting foam. Pour into deep copper mould. In quick succession, but without creating so much friction as to lose the carbonation, add whole stonefruits such as plums, cherries, and apricots; wood chips; snow sourced from wherever is most convenient (side of the road is fine); mayonnaise and boiled cabbage; an orange peeled in one gesture. Fill until all is quite snug with two inches to spare in mould. The effect should be of incoherence but then pulling your head out and gathering all the feeling up, to be reassembled. Chill until set. Meanwhile, combine the conserved broth with leftover wheat-based gruel until it thickens. Add this mixture to the mould and return to chill for six weeks, or until your marriage breaks down. Vigorously remove from mould and consume. 

Movie still from The Boy Friend. mime/clown poses with a single teadrop.

The Boy Friend: “macedoine pastiche”

Procure the kind of gelatin that’s been processed to create thin, clear-as-plastic sheets, with diamond perforations. Shatter it along the perforations, if you’re so inclined, and sprinkle the shards into a mixture of lime cordial and tonic water. This will be a macedoine jelly, which is created using a two-part mould to form a complex, tiered interior. This mould in particular has a scalloped effect on the outer edge, coming to form a soft, round point at the top. Add some pieces of silver foil and dust from between the boards to the gelatin mixture. Pour this into the large outer mould, around the liner which forms the second part of the mould. When set, warm the liner with hot water and remove it. Into this cavity you may carefully choreograph a Busby Berkeley pastiche, using: maraschino cherries, coloured lighting gels, eyelash glue, candied lime and orange peels, and asbestos curtain piecework. For the pastiche to succeed, it must be: symmetrical, angular, chirpy. When this all has been structured and blocked, chill until the very minute you must reveal it, whether it’s ready or not. Make sure to unveil it from a bird’s eye point of view. Devour in company.

In 1971, Ken Russell released three different films, all period pieces: The Devils, The Music Lovers, and The Boy Friend. 

Most of Russell’s works were period films, many of them biographies of classical music composers. In a Ken Russell period piece, we’re presented with History as a slippery sloshing back and forth between then and now. Mahler’s fifth at full volume and shag haircut anachronisms and fever sweat and an ornate sense of space. Sometimes watching a Ken Russell movie feels like what I imagine a power washer to the brain feels like. Or the rising and falling of salty tides, time-lapsed to ten times the speed. 

Russell is less interested in historical accuracy than an account of a history or moment, a warped kind of period faithfulness that is articulated via expressive excess, hounding the affective experience of, say, when you’re Tchaikovsky and you marry an insane woman so that people would stop thinking you were gay. Or when you’re a nun and you become so carnally obsessed with the local priest you end up ruining his life. Or when you're Twiggy and must understudy the lead role in a full-length Busby Berkeley-style stage extravaganza. 

The throughline between all of Russell’s films is perhaps a manic sensibility as guiding principle. This is what cracks his period pieces open, what makes them really work—when the most beautiful, languid-hazy sequences you've ever seen suddenly turn into something brutal and alien and perverse. Characters are rash and lovesick, incoherent and steely, driven by desire, at cross purposes. Hallucinatory montage is interwoven with theatrical immediacy, like direct address in a windstorm. The very air feels tangible. 

Russell’s period pieces ask us to see the past as strange and unruly, interested in rearranging the ingredients of taste as much as pushing the limits of it—pondering the mouthfeel of witch hunts in seventeenth-century France, or of musical ecstasy in nineteenth-century Russia. His movies are like aspics in this way: intricate and a little off-putting. Where many recent period pieces seem to tread carefully, too self-aware to be genuinely bizarre, Russell finds a kind of transcendence in tastelessness that activates the past.

So here are three gauche little jellies in homage to Russell’s 1971 trio:

Movie still from The Devils. A woman in white stands in front of a group of people, some peasants, some in armor.

The Devils: “blancmange in a flummery mould”

First, boil a disgraced priest’s pelvic bone for ten minutes. If you cannot easily source this, veal knuckles are fine. For this recipe, we suggest, perhaps unconventionally, using a flummery mould for blancmange—ceramic, architectural, tall, and producing a rather kinetic effect when set. We look to Derek Jarman’s set design for instruction: white tile stretching on and on, white brick, abstracted fortifications. The way they warp and reorient forms we at first recognize from "the past" (history, place, feeling). Prepare the mould by not cleaning it at all. Take equal parts cream and ditch water and add to pot. Bring to a simmer. An homage to the early medieval stew iteration will be made in the form of shredded chicken and rice. Add these to the pot, along with a sprinkle of ash. The mixture may now be poured into the flummery mould to set. When ready, hold the dish in your warm hands until you feel it begin to peel away from the edges of the mould. Place on a dish, observe the blancmange and enjoy it while you can. 

Movie still from The Music Lovers. A woman talks to two men who stare at one another at a fancy performance outside in a garden.

The Music Lovers: “stuffed savoury aspic”

Hunt a swan, process it, and boil for a third of an hour. Combine the resulting gelatinous broth with two bottles of champagne leftover from your nuptials, shaken over the course of a train journey. Set some of the broth aside. Do not remove resulting foam. Pour into deep copper mould. In quick succession, but without creating so much friction as to lose the carbonation, add whole stonefruits such as plums, cherries, and apricots; wood chips; snow sourced from wherever is most convenient (side of the road is fine); mayonnaise and boiled cabbage; an orange peeled in one gesture. Fill until all is quite snug with two inches to spare in mould. The effect should be of incoherence but then pulling your head out and gathering all the feeling up, to be reassembled. Chill until set. Meanwhile, combine the conserved broth with leftover wheat-based gruel until it thickens. Add this mixture to the mould and return to chill for six weeks, or until your marriage breaks down. Vigorously remove from mould and consume. 

Movie still from The Boy Friend. mime/clown poses with a single teadrop.

The Boy Friend: “macedoine pastiche”

Procure the kind of gelatin that’s been processed to create thin, clear-as-plastic sheets, with diamond perforations. Shatter it along the perforations, if you’re so inclined, and sprinkle the shards into a mixture of lime cordial and tonic water. This will be a macedoine jelly, which is created using a two-part mould to form a complex, tiered interior. This mould in particular has a scalloped effect on the outer edge, coming to form a soft, round point at the top. Add some pieces of silver foil and dust from between the boards to the gelatin mixture. Pour this into the large outer mould, around the liner which forms the second part of the mould. When set, warm the liner with hot water and remove it. Into this cavity you may carefully choreograph a Busby Berkeley pastiche, using: maraschino cherries, coloured lighting gels, eyelash glue, candied lime and orange peels, and asbestos curtain piecework. For the pastiche to succeed, it must be: symmetrical, angular, chirpy. When this all has been structured and blocked, chill until the very minute you must reveal it, whether it’s ready or not. Make sure to unveil it from a bird’s eye point of view. Devour in company.

Hannah Ferguson is an artist and writer based in Montreal.

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