Summary

Prokofiev (BBC, tx. 18/6/1961), subtitled 'Portrait of a Soviet Composer', was the second of Ken Russell's composer biopics, though it takes a rather different approach from his first, Gordon Jacob (BBC, tx. 29/3/1959). Whereas in the earlier film Russell had access to the composer himself, Sergei Prokofiev had died eight years earlier (coincidentally, on the same day as Stalin), and there appeared to be no authentic moving-image footage of him in existence