Women in Love is a 1969 British romantic drama film directed by Ken Russell and starring Alan Bates, Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson, and Jennie Linden.

The four are later brought together at a house party at the estate of Hermione Roddice, a rich woman whose relationship with Rupert is falling apart.

When Hermione devises, as entertainment for her guests, a dance in the "style of the Russian ballet", Rupert becomes impatient with her pretensions and tells the pianist to play some ragtime.

One evening, emotionally exhausted after his father's illness and death, Gerald sneaks into the Brangwen house to spend the night with Gudrun in her bed, then leaves at dawn.

He was looking for another project when Silvio Narizzano, who had directed the successful Georgy Girl (1966), suggested Kramer make a film of Women in Love.

[8] "I wanted to show you can convey emotion along with action and that ideas and talk and beautiful scenery are not incompatible in films," said Kramer.

After Narizzano's departure, Kramer considered a number of directors to take on the project, including Jack Clayton, Stanley Kubrick and Peter Brook, all of whom declined.

His second film, Billion Dollar Brain was admired by Chasman and Picker at UA, who told him "they thought it got a raw deal from right wing critics and that I could do better with a more sympathetic subject.

[9] Russell says casting was "difficult" in part because most of his television work was done with non-actors so he was "totally out of touch to the real talent at hand.

"[9] Kramer had been talking to Alan Bates about playing Birkin for a number of years and he was cast relatively easily.

[9] Michael Caine, who had just made Billion Dollar Brain with Russell, says he was offered a lead role but turned it down because he felt unable to do the nude scene.

Fox fitted Lawrence's description of the character ("blond, glacial and Nordic"), but United Artists, the studio financing the production, imposed Oliver Reed, a more bankable star, as Gerald even though he was not physically like Lawrence's description of the character.

United Artists was unconvinced, considering her not conventionally beautiful enough for the role of Gudrun, who drives Gerald to suicide.

Both Vanessa Redgrave and Faye Dunaway declined to take the role, finding it the less interesting of the two sisters and that they would be easily eclipsed by Glenda Jackson's acting skills.

[citation needed] It was by accident that Russell and Kramer came upon a screen test that Jennie Linden had made opposite Peter O'Toole for The Lion in Winter, for a part she did not get.

[13] Linden had recently given birth to her only son and was not eager to take the role but was persuaded by Kramer and Russell.

Bates and Reed received a percentage of the profits while Linden and Jackson were paid a straight salary.

[citation needed] Russell said he regretted omitting a scene where the sisters went to London "where they sample la vie boheme.

"[11] Russell later wrote "I've made better films than Women in Love but obviously it had something that tickled the public's fancy, and it wasn't just the male members of Messrs Bates and Reed.

But the film did have some excellent performances...and both Alan and Olly really came to grips with the subject, especially in the nude wrestling scene.

[1] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "It is hard to imagine what a completely faithful translation of Lawrence would look like, or even if it would be at all watchable.

Women in Love has peopled an authentic landscape with the right faces and a 'crowded canvas' of detail in the hope that the author's vision will inevitably shine through.

On the strength of it, Women in Love probably deserves as kind a reception as The Fox and is certainly more enjoyable than Joseph Strick's aesthetically grinding and all too willed adaptation of selections from Ulysses.

[31][32] The supplementary materials on the Criterion release include audio commentaries and various interviews, along with the 1972 short film Second Best, produced by and starring Alan Bates, based on a story by D. H.