Film at Lincoln Center Podcast
Oct 11, 2026 · 35 min · 11 segments
Welcome to the final daily 64th New York Film Festival podcast. On today’s edition, we present a special two-part conversation in celebration of Ken Russell’s restored, uncensored cut of The Devils…
Mark KermodeGuestAround the time that Ken passed away, I think you said that you regarded it, The Devils, as probably the best English film of the second half of the 20th century.
I wanted to ask you about how you saw it in relation more specifically with British cinema of the 1970s and how this has emerged from the pack.
It's one of the films that I think people think of when they think of 1970s British cinema.
But maybe could you tell us a little bit about how you see that relationship to sort of the landscape that it came into?
And this was a wound that British cinema carried for a long time, even though it was said as a joke.
Ken came much more from another tradition of British cinema, which is not celebrated so much, which is Powell and Pressburger.
And there is a direct line which goes from Powell and Pressburger to Ken Russell to Nick Rogue, and then later on to people like Ben Wheatley.
And this is, it's a very, very strong part of British cinema, and it's quite often not thought of.
And so I think that the time that The Devils came out is often thought of as a time when a lot of controversial, difficult, challenging movies came out.
And I think that's one of the reasons why The Devils kind of gets situated within 70s cinema.
I think of it as a kind of thematic companion piece to something like A Matter of Life and Death, because it is similarly one foot in this world, one foot in the next world.
And I think that the reason that the reputation of it has grown is actually precisely because it isn't just grounded in the 1970s.
It is grounded in a much broader kind of worldview, theological worldview, political worldview.
And so when you quoted to me, you said, I said, probably the best British, did I? Probably or likely or something.
Around the time that Ken passed away, I think you said that you regarded it, The Devils, as probably the best English film of the second half of the 20th century.
I wanted to ask you about how you saw it in relation more specifically with British cinema of the 1970s and how this has emerged from the pack.
It's one of the films that I think people think of when they think of 1970s British cinema.
But maybe could you tell us a little bit about how you see that relationship to sort of the landscape that it came into?
And this was a wound that British cinema carried for a long time, even though it was said as a joke.
Ken came much more from another tradition of British cinema, which is not celebrated so much, which is Powell and Pressburger.
And there is a direct line which goes from Powell and Pressburger to Ken Russell to Nick Rogue, and then later on to people like Ben Wheatley.
And this is, it's a very, very strong part of British cinema, and it's quite often not thought of.
And so I think that the time that The Devils came out is often thought of as a time when a lot of controversial, difficult, challenging movies came out.
And I think that's one of the reasons why The Devils kind of gets situated within 70s cinema.
I think of it as a kind of thematic companion piece to something like A Matter of Life and Death, because it is similarly one foot in this world, one foot in the next world.
And I think that the reason that the reputation of it has grown is actually precisely because it isn't just grounded in the 1970s.
It is grounded in a much broader kind of worldview, theological worldview, political worldview.
And so when you quoted to me, you said, I said, probably the best British, did I? Probably or likely or something.
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