Ken Russell

[poliphilo]

The Devils is the best British movie of the past 40 years.

And Liztomania is the second best.

Song of Summer and Dance of the Seven Veils are the best films ever made for television.

All right, maybe I'm being a little unreasonable, but Ken Russell just died and I don't want to be thinking about anybody else's work right now.

I watched the Devils this afternoon. 40 years old? 40 years ahead of us, more like. 

The history of postwar British cinema goes like this. First there was Michael Powell, then there was Ken Russell. The End.

Comments

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

I introduced wardytron to A Matter of Life and Death at the weekend, oddly.

I saw The Devils when very young - eleven or twelve - and it really stayed in my memory; it was one of the things that shaped my aesthetic sensibilities in a way, certainly in terms of visualising and imaging the past.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The design of The Devils is extraordinary- meticulous attention to period detail combined with flagrant anachronism (Murray Melvin's 15th century hair cut, the exorcist's rock star styling) plus wild flights of fancy. Russell's 17th century is both intensely 17th century and timeless.