Bad sex and obscene undertakings: Ken Russell’s Women in Love

This article examines how issues of fidelity and adaptation influenced the reception of Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969) and its classification by the British Board of Film Censors at a galvanizing moment in British sexual history. Through the focus of Russell’s reading of D. H. Lawrence it opens up some wider questions about the fluctuating histories of adaptation, censorship, and liberty. The files documenting the classification of Women in Love held at the BBFC tell an important censorship story from a particularly incandescent cinematic moment.