Ken Russell & Vanessa Redgrave Recognize The Genius of The Devils

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 02 January 2012 12:01

Written by Brad Balfour

While every publication, news site and television program celebrated those who passed away at the end of this year, one incredible talent, the British director Ken Russell, was overlooked by much of the media in those look-backs since his death on November 27, 2011, at 84.

When Russell came to NYC in June 2010 for his Film Society of Lincoln Center retrospective, Russellmania, which took place from July 30 to August 5, 2011, he was exuberant about developing new projects and possibilities. It was as if this reassessment re-invigorated him for the future, even though he had this fragility about him.

Born on July 3, 1927, Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell was known for a flamboyant and controversial style. During his peak years, the English film director attracted criticism because of his obsessions with sexuality and the church. Best known for his Oscar-winning film Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), The Who's Tommy (1975), and the science fiction film Altered States (1980), he directed lots of feature films independently and for studios.

Russell began directing for the BBC, where he made creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. His pioneering work in television and film often dealt with the lives of famous composers or were based on other works of art which he loosely adapted. held in high regard by many classical musicians and conductors for his story-driven biopics of various composers, most famously Elgar, Delius, Liszt, Mahler and Tchaikovsky.

He’s also produced and directed theater including a play starring Keith Carradine in NYC. Finally a new Blu-ray release of Russell's The Devils came out further highlighting his work on the influential film.

Q: Of all of your films, which one do you feel is most perfect and why?

KR: The Devils because the characters are so excellent in it. It had the best cast I ever got together.

Q: Of all the actors you have worked with, who would you would cast again?

KR: I certainly liked Oliver Reed because he was always a challenge. Even with The Devils, he rose to the challenge and often transcended the possibilities of what he could do and couldn’t do.

Q: What did you think of it?

VR: I was astonished by the film the first time I saw it. I’m even more astonished now, because in everything -- the concepts, the text -- it’s like you took cinema into another world.

I personally haven’t seen anything like this for years, and I mean that in the sense of profound homage. That’s extraordinary images of the kind of brutal chaos that certainly happened at that time, and has happened and is happening at other times.

KR: That’s why I wanted to make it. It was a tale that needed retelling every few years because nothing changes and there’s still a lot of evil in the world. This is just a reminder of the evil that surrounds us.

Q: You were a Roman Catholic at one time in your life. Were you no longer a Roman Catholic by the time you made this film?

KR: I’m a devout Catholic; always have been, always will be.

Q: It's not the most flattering portrait of the Catholic Church.

KR: You were proud of this film, weren’t you darling?

VR: Yes. Very proud of it. Very proud of you, of Derek Jarman, very proud of the decisions you made to not go for the general run -- medieval, tired, semi-reconstituted -- but to go for this fantastic… I can’t put a name to it, because it’s beyond putting a name to. The conception of Loudun and the white tiles of Loudun, which sort of encompass this world, and when they crumble, reveal a bleakness both within and without.

There’s so much to take on board in the film, but in cinema terms and spiritual terms it’s extraordinary. I feel very inadequate even attempting to put one word after another. I’m very proud of it.

Q: Ken, you mentioned that Aldous Huxley had said that the exorcism of Sister Jeanne was like a rape in a public lavatory, and that informed your instruction of Derek Jarman.

KR: Yes. He went for it. He wanted to achieve this monumental horror story in terms Aldous Huxley would have appreciated, and that’s what we got, I think.

VR: That’s fantastic to hear it was Aldous Huxley.

Q: This film speaks to war and atrocity. Do you find in the world at this point that cinema can play a role in creating hope, because some people in charge continue to pollute and destroy this planet.

KR: You have to look for it and you need a magnifying glass to find it. That’s about all I have to say on it. It speaks for itself.

VR: I was at a conference [at the RFK Center] -- I won’t go into the whole conference -- but apart from attending, listening very carefully and being extremely encouraged, I joined Mandy Patinkin and Gloria Reuben in reading some testimonies by a few -- only nine -- of some hundreds of people who were photographed by [Eddie Adams] and interviewed by and for Kerry Kennedy.

There was an exhibition, and a school program for the curriculum called "Speak Truth to Power."

From my point of view, it's extremely important. The stories that Mandy, Gloria and I read, just brief excerpts, are by women and men from many different countries -- Russia, Chad, Ghana, and India -- who have [had] horrible violence done to them personally and around them, and turned it into defending human lives and human rights in a most extraordinary way.

This work tends to get drowned out by the very real violence and cruelty that is in the world. But it’s very important that these programs are being taken to schools.

Kids need to know that there are so many really decent people, some of whom have been wronged horribly, and dealt with very cruelly, that have not gone mad, and survived and have turned all the pain that they felt and the misery they felt into defending lives and human rights.

There are so many of these people, but they don’t hit the media. So I’m glad that I was there and I’m glad that I’ve been able to meet some extraordinary people.

I’m very glad to have met the families and some of the guys who have finally returned from Guantanamo. They’ve been through hell -- a hell that in my mind resembles that hell that we saw in the film. These are such remarkable people, and their families are very remarkable too, and so are the communities that came forward to help them and the children and wives.

School teachers, schools that opened their doors for public meetings to raise the issue that these are British citizens, British residents, they’ve been charged with no crime, they must be returned to Britain.

And because of prolonged campaign and a profound repugnance in all the legal circles for the profound illegality and cruelty, they are home -- with one exception of one man, one British resident with a British family, who’s still there.

Now I wouldn’t have gone into this except to say that in my experience -- and I can only say from my experience -- I have seen as much decency in human beings and protection and will to defend humanity as I have of cruelty.

KR: I’m sure Vanessa’s sentiments are quite profound and need no continuity or thought to continue. So I would just like to thank her once again for her profound words. Thank you.

VR: Well, I’d like to thank you for this wonderful, iconoclastic, philosophically iconoclastic [film], which went with a profound faith. Because I think people who have a profound faith are the people prepared to break all the barriers for that faith to become and be what it could be but isn’t, so often.

KR: Yes, thank you very much. I can’t add any more to that.

Q: The Devils to you is what Paths of Glory was for Stanley Kubrick. I consider them the same area.

VR: He considers your film The Devils to be in the same area as Stanley Kubrick’s.

Q: Yes, because of the corruption and politics.

KR: It’s the destruction. Everything we hold good and right. The film really sort of confirms what we all feel about situations like Loudun, situations which went on and have gone on for centuries and with little sign of ceasing. So that’s what it’s about.

Q: You recorded audio commentary for a DVD that has yet to materialize. The Devils became available on iTunes. It looked beautiful, but in 72 hours was pulled with no explanation from iTunes or Warner Brothers -- like they’re afraid to let people see this film. It’s still incendiary and censored. There’s a sequence, the rape of Christ, that's not in this film. It was shown in England but not here in the States.

KR: That was Warner Brothers just putting the boot in. They’ve never liked the film from the day it was first seen. They’re afraid of it.

Q: It has been reported that someone went into the vaults at Warner Brothers, unearthed the canister print and there was a note in there that said, "This film shall never see the light of day." At least we proved them wrong tonight.

KR: The only way it will see the light of day is if you all write to Warner Brothers. I gather it’s just opened in Spain in a version yet to be seen.

Q: What was it like working with Oliver Reed?

KR: It was very interesting. He’s not the most forthright person to have conversations with. But we devised a method of communication, which I will pass on. He’s dead now, so it won’t do any harm.

My method of working with him was quite simple once I worked it out. We worked out moods. He would ask me what mood I wanted particularly for a scene. Did I want it moody one, moody two, or moody three? And depending on the horror I wanted, or lack of it, I would say "Let’s try moody one," and that would be it. Mostly it was moody two.

Q: Vanessa, you didn’t really have many scenes with him.

VR: I was in a scene in which I couldn’t even see him, so we weren’t acting…as you can see; we didn’t have any scenes together. I think he’s very, very good in the film. Whether that’s Ken’s choice of moody one or moody two [I can't say], but I think he’s very, very good.

KR: I have nothing to say except to congratulate you on a wonderful performance. It really is extraordinary.

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