The Pink Smoke podcast
1974: Fifty Years Later / Mahler
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1974 was a landmark year for film, a convergence of exciting international cinema and the original voices of New Hollywood that still resonates 50 years later. In our new series we invite a different guest for each episode to choose a 1974 movie to talk about, ranging from giant blockbusters to minor cult curios and everything else in between.
Falling somewhere between his more restrained films about Elgar and Delius and his untamed biopics of Strauss and Liszt, in 1974 Ken Russell released a portrait of Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer Gustav Mahler and his silently suffering spouse Alma. We welcome back Russell's wife and collaborator Lisi Tribble Russell, who shares her insights on this low-key masterpiece and memories of her friendship with its star, the wonderful Georgina Hale.
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- Broadcast on:
- 01 Oct 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
(upbeat music) The movie opens on this serene lake, this misty morning in this quaint beach house on a pier. And you're watching it and you're kind of thinking, this is a very somber opening for a Ken Russell movie. I'm just kind of unexpected. And then the whole beach house lights a blaze magically. - Below is up. - Explodes, you know, from no source, just like the inactive god. And from that point on we're propelled into faces on rocks and, you know, a body tearing out of cocoon, but so elegantly with such boys and grace and musicality as we hear the first movement of the third symphony, which just immediately feels like it belongs to this film. It belongs to these images. And that's the beginning of Ken Russell's mauler. That's the film we're talking about on this episode of the 1974 series where we talk about films from 1974 that are now 50 years old with a very special guest. And there's no more special guests than today's Lisee Triple Russell. Thank you so much, Lisee, for joining us to talk about this film. - Oh, two of my favorite people. I'm so glad you're here because you're so smart, both of you. (laughing) - Well, we're so glad you're here. - Yes, absolutely. Thank you for doing another episode with us. I think the last time we had you on was to talk "Dance of the Seven Veils" - It was. - About Ken's Strauss movie. And that was a really special experience. I think for both John and I to see that film and talk about you with it, given its history of being a, is suppressed the right word? Righteously taken down copyright bullied by the Strauss family and taken out of circulation and having it sort of come back to life in recent years now that the copyright has expired. And yeah, so we wanted to have you, or if not that we wanted to, when you agreed to come back to talk about this movie from 1974 and other one of his musician biopics, we were super duper happy to have you on again. - I was thrilled to be asked. I am thrilled to be asked. And I love this movie so much. It's probably the first Ken Russell movie I saw except for billion dollar brain when I was nine. (laughing) - You can start to tell us what your first experience seeing Mueller was. Can you, do you remember how old he was? - Yeah, I was 17 or 16, and it came on PBS in Charlotte, North Carolina. So I was either, yeah, I was probably 15 or 16, you know? Let's see, what year was that it come out, '74? Yeah, so. - You don't have to reveal your age in such detail. Maybe it aired on PBS if you don't want to, four years later. - Are you joking? - Yeah, I have no idea how old I was except that it was, I did know it was my second Ken Russell film, but only in retrospect because I didn't realize who Ken was as a person, even though I also saw Isadora on PBS, the biggest dancer in the world, with my mother. And then saw women in love and realized that there was a person, a consciousness there, until then, I just took in films like your son Mike, you know? You don't need to know the credits, but I did oddly enough see Georgina Hale, when I was also that young in Butler. Do you remember that coming out? - I do not know Butler. Butler was a Landau, I think his name was Eli Landau, decided to film an important place. And they were, and then, and show them in America. And you got your little picket, as though you were going to the British theater, the old Vic, and it was very exciting. And they showed plays, and this one was Pinter directed this one. You know, they did all the great, the ice cream comets, and so, I got my ticket, but when I, but Georgina, that was her first movie. And I wrote her name down during the filming, which I think is so odd. - Yeah. - Because I hadn't, had I seen, yeah, I'd seen Moller, but I didn't recognize her. In Butler, she plays a modern girl. - Yeah. - A school teacher. But I wrote down, Georgina Hale, good actress, and so I were, (laughs) next. (laughs) And later we became best friends. That was, that was my luck. So when you say the hot blew up to the third symphony, that was Ken's signature that he always had to keep his father from leaving the room or turning the channel whenever one of his films played on television. - I remember you telling us that during the death of the seven days. - I was gonna say the same with the same signature. - I mean, it's not an opening. If you see this opening and you're not hooked, I just don't know what to tell you. It's one of the great like opening shots. - It's my favorite opening, yeah. - It's so amazing. - And it's so Ken. And he said, you know, I filmed it in that Lake District, which is where my marriage went up in fire. (laughs) So he said, that was the symbol for that. And there's a horn outside. That's Moller. (laughs) Yeah, and so he had to talk Moller's daughter into doing it because Stephen want to after having seen "Bance of the Sevens' Tale" off the film, and also about a composer. And you know, every word in that was from Strauss's diary, but she didn't trust Ken to have a good make Moller be sympathetic. - Yeah. - So what he didn't know was that Ken adored Moller, and thought that he was the most like Moller and Elgar, but Moller and he had a birthday four days apart and several years, and always talked about it. - Well, I'm like Moller, you think. - It's interesting because it is such a mirror film to "Dance of the Seven Veils" in a lot of ways that they really are wrapped up in the same thematic concerns and with, you know, the sort of reflection where of the Strauss, the not really a Nazi and Moller, the not really a Jew sort of reflecting against each other in funny ways. - Yes, that's probably a better way of phrasing it. The Jew who's sort of trying to not become that in the same way that, you know, Strauss's association with, you know, like the "Ricommer" and stuff like that, where he clearly doesn't believe in it either, you know, and clearly has a very conflicted, complicated relationship with it. Listen to our episode on that film if you want to know more about it, but these films are very interesting reflections. So it's interesting that Moller's daughter did not did not want him to do what Deux Demol or what he had done to Strauss. But I think that he, you know, I think that he did something very good for sort of that movie, honestly. I think that by trying to engage it directly, and I think that this movie, there's no question that he loves Moller. This is like a really invigorating movie in that way. It's a movie that-- - It is. There's a love letter. I mean, he understood him. I will say in my estimation, I don't think Ken was as, to depressive as Moller was said to be. - Yeah. But, you know, I do see why he totally related to Moller with, and how he put that in the film, everything that he cares most about and worried about and obsessed about. - Yeah. Well, there's this phenomenal quote in his autobiography about the film, which really just kind of sums it up very succinctly. Just read it real quick. So Ken Russell said, you know, Elgar Part Moller is my favorite composer, and I feel we have a lot in common, apart from both being can Syrians and living near a lake surrounded by mighty hills. As in my custom, when approaching a film on a composer, I'd donned my Sherlock Holmes outfit and search for the soul of the man in his music, while also keeping the facts of his life in mind. And just as I had with Chekhovsky, I found a lot of bombast on the way, the sound and fury of a tormented artist. I also found music that was brutal, vulgar, grotesque, macabre, and was inevitably pilloried for reflecting these elements in the film. I found joy, poetry and magic too, and included them as well. Naturally, they were ignored by those suffering from blind prejudice. (laughing) It's a pity their followers don't trust the evidence of their own eyes and ears to come to that. And, but to do that, you have to have an individual with a mind of your own. So, I think that that's something that perfectly, that's what he's finding. Obviously, this is a kind of a fragmented film, not as severely as "Dance the Seven Veils", but with this framing device of his final trip, his final journey on this train, cutting to different points of his life and different dreams and different fantasies. - From Paris to Vienna, yeah. - Exactly, yeah. - Right out doing a big concert that went, that didn't go that well for him in New York. So that was the, the placing of it. They were on that train. - As you mentioned to us, go ahead, sorry. - Ken made it, he said this over and over again to me. It's a rondo. - Yeah. - And so it's one basic theme, and then variations come in here and there. And that, you know, his future, his past, his dreams, his nightmares all kind of land on that train journey. And that was because they pulled out some of the financing before it started and had to move it from Bavaria to the Lake District, which was a lucky move because Ken knew the Lake District, every hill, everything, what the hills tell me, what the, what nature tells me, whatever those songs of Mahler were named, what the, that was Ken, you know, he talked to nature. He said that Kazakh was God made manifest, which is a quote from college. But that, he really believed that. He just loved the Lake District. - Well, you mentioned to us last time we talked to you that he'd always said he wanted to be a composer. Obviously he finds parallels between his own life and the subject of his films. I would say like his films are sort of 30% autobiographical in that way. - Exactly. - And at the time, I guess just to kind of give a context, he'd come off the devils, which infamously Warner Brothers had taken and censored and, you know, buried pretty much after that. And it kind of remains buried today. We haven't seen his true version like in any kind of like an official release, even in 2024. - Yeah, so the, so I think that must have informed, you know, tell me if I'm wrong, but you know, the whole thing with Cosmo Wagner and his Jewishness being like a problem with him moving his career forward and his music being, you know, kind of buried at the time. - Yeah, and I saw that Mahler and Ken knew this when he talked to Freud, or was analyzed by Freud, he said to Freud, oh, I see why my music didn't quite make the highest vanguard of art is because I had burlesque elements in it and common folk tunes in it. And what do they say about Ken? - Right. (both laughing) - Yeah, he loved the accordion and the musical, the variety shows too, and burlesque. And it's all in, Paula, I don't wanna, you know, steer anyone away from the film, but it, you know, that it, he was trying to do honor too. The wide range of sources that feed a composer's work, which is obviously, you know, just giving back to us in this incredible whole way. So, Ken used to listen to the music and that's where he got his images. He was a cynist who, who, he couldn't listen to music without it making pictures in his mind, which was good. He didn't, he liked that, he thought everybody did that. He was definitely, definitely had the film in his mind before he ever picked up the pen. And it would be to the music. That's, he would just listen to the music and that was his greatest love. You know, even Bill Hertz said, "My memories of Ken are of classical music." He taught me classical music. - Amazing. It's funny also you mentioning the Rondo and Freud. One of the things that strikes me about this movie and the time period he's working with and what's happening in like Vin and that area and in that era. You know, just saying a Rondo reminds me of, you know, Laurent, which is based on the Arthur Schnitzler book, which is written at virtually the same time. Mahler is, is that this film is taking place and that this movie is taking place. And just, you know, Freud is there and the Vin and Robert Mussel and Adolf Luz and you know, Egon Schliel and all of these incredible artists are in this area working at that time and just what an incredible cultural moment. - Turtles. - Yeah. - Incredible. - Just an incredible, incredible cultural moment. You know, Hoffman Stahl and Swig and Otto Wagner and just all of these and Wittgenstein and just, it's crazy to think about. - It is. - It actually does a really good job sort of, I don't know, conjuring like that moment in the film, even though they're not there, there's like, I don't know, there's something, like he inherently understands those associations between like Arundo and Laurent and Schnitzler and this movie has that texture to it somehow, you know. - He does, I mean, yeah, Ken's consciousness puts it in there. - He's got things done, he pretends it's by him in Alma Moller's "Dance on the Coffin" behind her, the portrait of Moller. - Yeah, the Fauciel. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's after, now Fauci. - Yeah. (laughs) - I was telling Chris for like two seconds, I saw that I was like, is that Egon Schliel? And then I was like, no, that's obviously a portrait of Robert Powell, Egon Schliel is not alive in the '70s to do that, so. - No, I went and looked it up and I was like, did Schliel know the Moller's? Why did he paint that? Did he know Alma Moller and all of that kind of? - Did he? Did he? - It's the, I did not get a clear answer, I just went down a rabbit hole of looking up completely other things. It ended up with me texting John, did you know that Thomas Mann had a brother who wrote the Blue Angel, which I didn't know that the guy who wrote Professor Unrat was Thomas Mann's brother, so. - Wow. I mean, the whole Tom Mann thing is, oh gosh. - Yeah. - 'Cause I was like his man in Vienna at all in that time 'cause that would be too perfect. And the answer is no, he's just stays in Berlin basically his whole life, so. - No, he was just, he came to kin through. (laughing) - Let me ask you, did Georgina Hale have stories of working on this that she shared with you? So this is like a big film in her career, right? - Yes, it was probably her biggest film. - Yeah. - I would say it was, absolutely. She won the BAFTA for it. Newcomer, BAFTA Newcomer. And can really fought for her to be in this film. - And she's amazing. She makes the movie. - She makes the movie. She's the most sympathetic one and she's so varied and you get exactly where she's coming from and she said to me, I always wanted to play a mama. And so whenever I see that scene with her and the children trying to protect the children, I think of that. 'Cause she said that's what I really wanted to play a mama. I was so excited, but she said, Ken fought for her and she was not aggressive. So she said, oh no, that's okay, you know. I'm a theater actor, so they really don't know my work and Ken said, I'm not doing it unless you do it. And he, you know, so she was extremely loyal to Ken and did any movie thereafter. She and Roger Daughtry and then she and Roger did a film together by himself. (laughing) - Well, it's funny 'cause there's all the lits talk in this movie and then, you know, it's a manious next year. So it was kind of like, well, I wonder if he's like writing and getting lits together as he's shooting this 'cause it's clearly on his brain so much. - Yeah, all of those musicians, most of my florok prominence and it's mine because all of them were right there. He knew all of them and, you know, someone came to look at the house and said, "Your floor is going to collapse from the records, "you know, the giant photographs, records. "It's going to collapse." And yeah, so she also did list and sort of Roger, of course, but all of those were on his mind because he wanted to do all of them and Putnam, David Putnam produced it with Sandy Lieberson and they were going to produce three pictures for Ken of composers. And so this was the first and list of "Omania" was the second. The third, I don't believe it ever got done. - Mm-hmm. - It was supposed to be the Strauss, right? Was that what the third was? - No, I thought it was Wagner. I thought he was doing Wagner. - It was Wagner. It was gonna be Wagner, okay. - Because he did Strauss for television and then they actually fired him from television for doing that and he went on, he went right from there to films. It was just, it was kind of the push he needed 'cause he would have stayed there forever. He loved it, he loved that job, but he got, you know, the fire came into him and he wanted to do what he knew he could do, which was kind of different than what other British movie makers were doing. And Putnam gave him that chance with those three movies that two of which were made. And then his friend made the Wagner. Yeah, he made a movie about Wagner. I can't think of, well, he died recently. I can't think of his name right now. Oh God, help me. - That's okay. It happens to all of us. (laughing) - But Georgina is so captivating in this film. It's striking when you are familiar with Ken's work from the '70s, when it's not a hugely gigantic performance like a Vanessa Redgrave or a Glenda Jackson that you get such a subdued, quiet, intense performance like Georgina gives in this film. And obviously, he's had strong women characters from his adore and Savage Messiah and everything, but this one in particular, because I've already mentioned that the prevalent idea of the movie seems to be, molars are undermined and dispatched by, possibly by Nazi Germany, but to a more intimate level, it's him doing the same thing to Alma and her songwriting, the way he's undermining her talent and her creative of energy, taking away that agency from her. And it's a very kind of stark thing to take a film about this huge compose everyone knows and make it about the wife who does not, because it does not have that kind of reputation. - Yeah. - I love her lines, you know, it's a terrible thing when you destroy someone. - You destroy something that's alive and nobody notices. - Alive and nobody notices. - That scene where she buries, yeah, the song, we've seen over it is amazing. It's incredible. - But I'll tell you one thing also about this movie is you believe in their love, even as it doesn't shy away from the cruelty and self-abnegation of their marriage. And that's one thing that's really striking to me. When I read about Mahler's real marriage and real life, I don't come away thinking like, wow, what a romance for the ages. They'll live forever. When I see the movie, I'm like, no, this is, this is, it's just so invigorating and full of life. You like, I don't know. For me, those final two scenes in this movie are like as romantic as it gets in cinema. Maybe the end of the music lovers, but other than that. Now I'm just, but, but, but, but really it's like. - Well, that's a thing though. That's the thing is that you would think that the implication would be her infidelities are what causing him to, you know, to decline and to, you know, to lapse into bad health. The way that, you know, a woman destroys grandeur and the devils or something like that. But you're right, it's not, it's a romantic look at like, no, these are two people actually need each other in a weird way. - Do you think that are like actually completely in love? Like the eternity of the music is tied to the eternity of their love is very powerful when you hear the music. You're like, if you're telling me this music is tied to their love, I can't deny the power of their love. Like I'm gonna like, like, I just, and some of the lines are just so romantic that he says to her, they're just so good. - Good. - And just being willing to sort of have that attitude. Sorry. - Yeah, I was just saying to her, but the sixth movement is you, Alma. It's, you're the bright spark. - Yeah. - Who are the music? You are the music when she was feeling sounds. And the idea of I'm not afraid of death because I have loved is really powerful. It's really, really powerful. This movie, you know, it's interesting. Goddamn, I love this fucking movie. This movie, I was, I was, you know, in my mind, it's like, oh, he's got all of the great movies that he made about the various composers and like the music lover is the best one, I think. Like the music lover is so huge and amazing and crazy story and epic and just talked about him great performances. - It's still, I just love that really quick line about Tchaikovsky, where he says, "For music lovers everywhere." And I'm like, "Oh, yes, you haven't seen that movie smaller." (laughs) - Is it wonderful when he foreshadows it? Oh, yeah. - Yeah, great. But, and then I love, you know, I love the Debussy film, I love that one, and "Dance of the Seven Veils" is really something powerful and amazing. And so I'm like, those are all probably better than this movie, but this is my favorite. Like honestly, if I admit it, it's like this is my, like this is the one that like, I don't know, I just, I watched it again, like right before we're gonna record and it's like, oh my God, I just feel so alive watching this movie. You know what I mean? - It's gonna live forever. - We are, that's how you come out of it, but the feeling is like, you know, just like, I'm gonna put on that music and I'm never gonna die, you know? And it helps that I love Mahler, it's like Mahler and Bruckner are like my two guys that I love most of all. And so it helps with that too, that you just spend the whole movie steeped in it. And then when the sequence with the Wagner, I have a funny reaction. I know, I know Mahler, not share this opinion, but I hear it and I'm like, stupid fucking Wagner, I hate this music, get this bomb passed out of my face. It was falling us away from me, you know? Listen, this is music for human sacrifices, get us away from me. - That's, Ken would have loved you saying that. (laughing) Oh, that's so funny. Yes, Mahler's my favorite, definitely. - Yeah. - And Kynx, it was Kynx. - Interesting. - Yeah, we went up to the like just, no, we went up to Liverpool to hear a symphony practice for the fourth symphony. - Oh wow. - We got to sit in on the rehearsals and everything. Ken was just in heaven. - Wow. - Well, I was too, but I think it was as much fun to watch, Ken, because that's where he lived. Was in that music. - And it, he couldn't always share it. Like, you know, he was surprised that people didn't understand the references and list of me, I know. (laughing) He thought he was the last one to the table, you know? (laughing) - This has so many great levels. And one of the, one of the levels that I enjoy is how he has time on top of everything else, on top of telling like a really compelling story about these two people. He has time to kind of criticize biopics in a way and, and representations of artists on film. Just that small sequence where he parodies Death and Venice, the Visconti movie where he looks out at the train and sees the Rougey Cheeked guy in the white suit looking at the boy lustfully. - It's so mean. - It's incredibly mean, but it's so correct the same time. - I know, it's amazing. - You don't know Moller. I know Moller. - And this is a correct way. - That's when you said, I, when I first saw it with Ken, I said, now what, what was that? What impulse was behind that? And he said, he doesn't, he doesn't know Moller. I know Moller. And that wasn't Moller. Moller wasn't, you know, someone trying to hang on to beauty through a Italian boy. That wasn't Moller. - Yeah. That was Thomas Man's version. He said he was, he didn't even write it about Moller. He had someone else in mind at first and then changed it when he met Moller and said, oh, this would be a good stand-in for my dying artist. Dying in the cup of cholera. - Interesting. 'Cause in the book, he's a, in the book, he's a, right, he's a novelist. He's a writer in the book. And then, the, the, the viscante changes it to be a composer and has him talk about Moller in the movie or music theory that's like some of Moller's stuff. That's, that's interesting to, to know that. 'Cause it's, 'cause it is like I didn't even associate it with Moller until, until this movie. And then I was like, oh, I'm a dumb, dumb. When I, when I saw this movie, like I didn't get the reference, like I'm like, Ken, I was the last one to the table for it. I was like, oh, now I understand that. And then you go, and then I don't, you know, I know what I know about Moller as a person I know from this movie. And I know from Ken, mainly is what I would say. So that's, it's interesting, but all that's interesting. And it is, and it is, it's like delightfully mean. The caricature is like a perfect withering caricature of it. It's such a brief thing on screen. And it's so, it's so perfect. And it's so accurate, and it's so mean. And it's just like, oh, you can't go back and watch "Death and Venice" again, after, after that, you're just like, oh my God, you nailed 'em. It's over, you gotta hang it up. - Have you ever seen "Dirk Brogard" movie ever get in your... (laughing) Um. - Oh. - Oh my goodness, you know, that's true. - Oh, sorry, 10 or up. - That's, yeah, Ken couldn't resist his own impulses. - Yeah. (laughing) - That's how I always think about the Cosmo Wagner scene, the big epic scene, like, oh, he can't help himself. He's gotta put this in there. And every time I think it's going to be a scene I don't like, I think like, he can't build that far afield when you've been so beautiful up to this point. It's so elegant and so empathetic to these people. Like, to do this crazy thing and to this very Ken Russell thing. And every time I see it, I'm like, holy shit, that sequence was incredible. I looked at it. - Yeah. - Just explained to listeners who might not have seen the movie. There's a sequence late in it that's a very classic Ken Russell sort of dream sequence, I guess, reverie, reverie's probably a better word for it, where it's a Mahler's Jew who's decided to convert to Catholicism and sort of the person overseeing in this reverie sequence, his conversion, which is full of symbols and flaming hoops with crosses in them and giant swords and teeter-totters flinging people around. That the person doing it, yeah, decapitated pig is Cosima Wagner, who was the widow of Richard Wagner, who's basically, she's sort of like the anti-Alma in some way, is a sort of legendarily unpleasant, dislike person, whereas Alma was just notoriously lovable and beloved, and someone who so happily defined herself in terms of her husband, in terms of Wagner, who made it her life's work to prop up his legacy and make sure it continued on, and who was also a notorious anti-Semite, and it was her doing, I think it was her nephew, but her nephew was the guy who was like the race theorist who got Wagner associated with the Nazis, although she has some amount to blame for that as well, she sort of willingly braced German nationalism as well, and so the sequence is-- - List daughter, list daughter. - Yes, list daughter. Yes, she was list daughter. - Why is that? - In Listimania, but a young girl, yeah. - Yeah, and was the product of an affair that she, her List cheated on somebody's wife and produced her, and so she had such a pedigree, obviously, in that, but yeah, the sequence is like this, it's like absolutely nutty classic, Ken Russell, baptism by fire sequence. - Yeah, I just, you don't expect it, it's a total, it's like a different movie, but the same actors, you know. - Yeah, yeah, when I watch his movies, especially those sequences, and there's a great earlier sequence where he's being buried alive in a coffin with a window, and all of that, and then sent to an incinerator, very similar, is as a filmmaker myself, when I watch him, I'm like, this is so fearless. It gets criticized 'cause it's obviously shameless, like Cosima's wearing like a diamond, like bejeweled swastika on her back of her leather skirt on the ass of her leather skirt, you know. - I love that. - But it's absolutely fearless to make sequences like this as a filmmaker, you have to just not care how your boldest strokes will be received. You just have to be so fucking fearless, and like the older I get, and the more I try and do things in the arts, the more it's like, holy shit. Like, it's like holy shit that he was just willing to do it. You know what I mean? - Yeah, astonishing that he did it and kept doing it, and it's almost like, I used to worry that it was self-sabotage, you know. But you can't say that to an artist or to yourself about an artist, because that's what you're here to do, to be fearless with their vision. And he wasn't thinking about how it would be received, although he did care, of course. - Yeah, of course. - He just had his vision, you know. - I love what you said, Lisa, about how it feels like a different movie that's sequenced, because a lot of the scenes feel like they're from different movies when it cuts to the flashback of him as a boy, it almost is a completely different movie for a while. But again, I love that he's playing with the format of the biopic like that. You know, he's taking scenes where, you know, you'll see something, and then he'll wake up on the train, and say, I just had this dream that you were bearing me alive. And apparently, he dreams in Drayer references, you know, with that window. - He does. I told him, Dan, Dan was such a Drayer-free, he dreamed. - He wrote in favor. - He wrote in Drayer, he dreamed in Drayer. That is one director I would not like to dream or write. - No! - I feel like Drayer, that would be my windowed coffin to just living under Drayer all the time. - Well, that's what he can't love nature, but he also recognized its power, its sinister power, too. And he put that in the Moller movie, you know, where the old Nick, the guy who, his mentor or friend, who teaches him to love nature, this boy who has no friends, that is, and they go into the dark wood, and they're, it's really scary, you know, and he's left there with the, with the pores, which is triumph out of those dark, out of that darkness. So Ken recognized both sides of nature, and he's a felt like Moller did, too. And also, Ken was a boy during the Blitz of Southampton and was in it. So he, of course, said, oh, no, I, that was fine. We took it, we took it as a natural, except that he lost his, the love of his life. It was his cousin, first cousin, was killed by a landmine. And, you know, a little girl. And he was sent away on a train to go live with other people so he wouldn't get bombed. And he said, I just opened my mouth and screamed, and they sent me back home. So he spent the war in the Blitz with his parents and his dad was a fire warden. And he, Ken was just so happy to be at home with his parents at that age, you know, 12, 14, maybe. No, I think it was more like 12. And that's all in the movie. That scene with the parents and the little boy is so moller, the little moller is so confused. He's a sensitive child who's so confused by, you know, his fan, the difference between himself and his family. And that was Ken, you know, he puts himself in these movies. - It's really interesting. I wanted to ask you, unlike a personal level, because in his films, there's so much about the conflict between like Catholicism and paganism, between nature and the church, like the physical church building, between the hugely spiritual nature of a lot of this music and the sort of nature, natural earthiness of what he does, what was his relationship to religion and spirituality? You know, you think one thing about the man who made the devils, and I was actually just rereading Roger Ebert's extremely brain damage review of the devil zero star review of the devils. Like this guy does not understand anything, but that movie is not just, oh, look how evil the church is, is not the meaning of that movie that I get from it. - What Ken was a Catholic guy? - Mary was his girlfriend, you see what I'm saying? - Yeah. - Mary's my girlfriend that thumbs up Ken. In other words, it wasn't a church to him, it was living. The Catholicism was a living force and presence. He thought, well, he converted, you know, as a grown up. So he, and he-- - Like Mahler. - Interesting. - Like Mahler. And he got these great instructions. I convert, I was converted 15 by, in the Philippines, 'cause you can't go to the Philippines, unless you're Catholic. And so I know that experience, Ken lived it as a grown up and he really chose it. He really believed in it. Almost, he called it like science fiction. To me, it was a good science fiction come to life. - Yeah. - In other words, that's why I say his faith was sober, but also had an element, like Ken, of the spectacular in it. Like, Mary's gonna come down on a cloud and help me. He had a childlike faith, I would call it, because he was, he had prayed to Mary and she had answered his prayer. So he said, okay, I got it. You know, he was addicted to snuff. He never did drugs, hard to believe. - Well, I actually believe it. Anytime you see a sequence in a movie and they're like, what were they on? You always meet the artist and they're like, I was just drinking coffee. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. - David Lynch. - Yeah, exactly. - Oh, he loves it. - We'll just reach chicken. - Yeah. - Well, it's funny that you mentioned Lynch, the filmmaker that I never thought about in context of Russell, except when I was watching it today, was this, the final sequence of Berlin Alexander Platts, the Fastbender series. So much of his work is like the end of that. The Baptist and Fire sequence in particular in this one is just a very end of Berlin Alexander Platts. And I was like, that must have been a huge influence on Fastbender. - It must have been. And Ken was so crazy about Fastbender. And we had to watch them, you know, like a bit. And Ken would say, oh, there's the little table that they used in the other film. As usual, taking in every detail and making it his own. He totally loved that man. But never met him, of course. And I don't know that Fastbender had ever mentioned Ken as being an influence, but it's highly life. - Well, if I could jump in with, yeah, just his influences, 'cause I think about Russell's influences a lot, because not a lot of people bring him up, you know, as somebody who they're clearly influenced by. But there are two films, just like a minor note, on one of them, Oppenheimer, the Christopher Nolan movie, that's, you know, it was a hugely successful biopic that's about to win all these Oscars. I would not be surprised to hear he's a huge fan of the structure of this film. And when I was kind of comparing them in my mind, I thought, well, but Oppenheimer doesn't really have dreams and fantasies. Oh, wait, it does throughout the whole thing. He's, they have the shaking rooms and the tension like you. And him on the plane seeing the rocket, she passed him. It's a very, very molar-esque, I feel. - It is, and I think no one yet is actually said he really likes Ken. - That's good to know, because yeah, Oppenheimer especially feels, yeah. - And he wouldn't have met him. He would have said to me, yeah, I liked him. I wouldn't be talking about him if he said I hate that. - Oh, sure, but the even bigger one though, is another British filmmaker, Mike Lee, I realized this movie is so much like his masterpiece, Mr. Turner, you know. - Oh gosh, do I love that movie. - Especially the relationship, it's kind of brief and molar, but the relationship between him and Hugo Wolf, his artist friend who is institutionalized and thinks he's, you know, royalty, you know. It's very much like the Benjamin Hayden character and Mr. Turner, you know. He's kind of unsuccessful artist, friend. So yeah, I would not be surprised at all to hear Mike Lee. He's a fan of molar and kind of based on bio-pick on some of the suggestions from this film. - I would be surprised. I mean, they're, you know, those, they're very, it's a very small island, like in English. - It's interesting hearing you talk about those two films, what strikes me about Russell's work as as wild as it is, the reason he's able to work in Hollywood in the established film industry is that he has very sound fundamental storytelling solutions for a lot of the problems that these things present, is that as wild as a filmmaker, he has the foundation and the basics and the fundamentals are so sturdy that he realizes you can build anything on top of them. So Nolan and Mike Lee, who are also very fundamentally sound filmmakers who understand storytelling in a very fundamental way, it doesn't surprise me that they come up with similar solutions to the problem of the bio-pick and the narrative problems of the bio-pick. I think that Russell is much more adventurous when he says, if I build this perfect foundation, with Russell to me, it feels not calculating at all. It feels like this is a natural storyteller who understands how stories are told, who understands how to talk to somebody in a room and make them feel like, oh, Ken told the fucking funniest story I've ever heard in my life, right? All the time. It has that feeling that I associate with John Houston of just like nothing academic to it just knows how to tell a story and so that's what they're building on top of completely unstudy, completely thoughtless. Like if I can't imagine if you gave Ken Russell like a SID field screenwriting book, you'd do anything other than throw it out the window, do you know what I mean? - Yeah, he didn't need to do that, but he definitely understood structure and the importance of having a solid script. And then you could do what you want, really, in his version of filmmaking. And that did help him in Hollywood, help him transfer to Hollywood. - Yeah, for sure. What do you, let me ask you too, both, but what do you think, when I watch this movie, a big chunk of it about it is how do we learn to care about music and like, where does the love of music come from? What do you think his answers were to that question? Or do you think? - His love of music was like an answer to loneliness. - Yeah. - Because he, you know, his family was not, but you know, they were very culturally, they were not interested in any of that at all. And his father was a shoe salesman. I mean, very well off, I would say, but they weren't cultured. They didn't admire that. And Ken, it wasn't that he admired it. He discovered it. He discovered it when he came, was sent down from the merchant Marines, had a nervous breakdown, was lying in the chair for nine months. He was just a kid really, because, you know, that's a obligatory service. And he had gone to the Penguin Military Academy of the, to be a sailor and for the queen. And that was when Branch was the merchant Marines. He came back, put on, I mean, put on the radio and Tchaikovsky came through the dial. And that was what he was healed, he said. And immediately from being neurostatic, meaning, you know, he couldn't move, really. He just got up, ran to the record store, and he had written it very carefully down and who the conductor was. And he got all that, and then that was it for him. You know, that was the thing that gave him life. So I think for him, it was an answer to not fitting in. He felt like an outsider. And being a kind of a lone child, and that he, I mean, they were all around, but his relatives, however, he was an imaginative child. And that answered, you know, the same reason we might have gotten into music when we turned 14 or something. You know, it answered something that he recognized was different in him, a spark in himself that his family didn't see. So it was his best friend, really, you know, and it healed him. And it was really just what he wanted to do. He tried even to be a composer, he wanted to be a conductor or a composer, but he could not, that, you know, he wasn't good at it, he said. - Yeah. - His mother did say, just like the mother thing, that there was some kind of a, you know, okay, well, you do have piano fingers, you know, 'cause he had long hands. Yeah, music is a language that says more than speech does, 'cause it carries other things, you know, it isn't as defined. As language or constricted, it just, what do you think music it answers? - I think that's a good question. For me, this, again, it's like, this movie connects it so thoroughly to love and human connection, right? - It is. - The movie connects it to nature and to children, and to existence, and to being alive in a way that's really powerful. Again, to when the Wagner comes in, it's like, no, no, get away, get away from me. I was finally loving how I leave the water. - Yeah, but the death as well, I mean, like Russell said in his book, you know, that's important. - The movie's all about death. - Yeah. - But it makes you not afraid of death, it connects death to natural world. It's the only time I feel like the old man at the beginning of "Dishinko's Earth" is when I watch this movie. (laughing) The guy who lays down, it's like, I guess I'll die now, and you're not afraid. (laughing) And it reminded me of the Sage and Suzuki. The poem, he always loved to quote, "If you want to sing than sing, if you want to die, then die." This movie does have it to it, and I think that's its contrast to death and Venice, is it's not gloomy, and it's not about this sort of pathetic grasping at ephemeral beauty. It's about eternal beauty, you know, and understanding Mahler's relationship, Mahler's relationship to eternal beauty in that way. And I think that of nature, of flames, of incineration. - The four elements, yeah. - And those things, even as they're terrifying, even as they're unsettling, even as love is imperfect, even as the world is imperfect, even as nature can incinerate you, and life can incinerate you, that there's still this gigantic eternal beauty to it, the sort of cosmic beauty to it. That's what I get from, and that is all expressed in the music, and when you listen to the music, there's no arguing it, you know what I mean? Everything I've just said, there's no arguing against it. - No, there's no arguing. And that's what Ken got, and that's what is in there, and he put on the film, in the film, and that his beliefs as a Catholic also included this cosmic view of everything, you know, the stars. He was not confined to Catholicism. I mean, he didn't see them as different, you know. He just, he liked the companies of monks because he said they had great senses of humor, which was. - Well, that's important, too, that I haven't even mentioned. This is a funny movie. He's such a funny director, inherently funny. A lot of it, it converted, you know, the camp stuff, but also just sly little throwaway lines, too. Or when he says, I think I'm gonna convert to Catholicism, and then the honking of the horn of the party. Like, that's such a fucking bananas funny moment. - Or the two second Oliver Reed cameo, 10 minutes into the movie for one shot. - That's fabulous. - Yeah, fantastic, I love it. And I had no, I didn't know where I was gonna bring that up. I just gotta throw that out there. (laughing) But I want to say for me, though, what I said at the beginning of the episode, that the music feels like it belongs to these images, that belongs to this film, that for me is really the magic of Ken Russell. Like you said, Lee, you see that he saw images as he heard this music, and that he was able to translate that on the screen, that's Ken Russell magic right there. I love-- - That's the best track. - Yeah, yeah, I love it. - I think the image was, I've never seen anyone do it as well. - No, but, and I love that you said he wrote down the Tchaikovsky and ran to the record store. I love that that made me think immediately of you writing down Georgina's name when you saw her own and said, this is someone who's gonna be important in my life. Something's just happened. This is just these fateful things. I love that. And I just wanted to say to you, just right to you that I'm so sorry for your loss with Georgina, we lost Glenda Jackson last year, and then Georgina at the beginning of this year, it's heartbreaking, yeah. - Yeah, yeah. So we had, yeah, we had a up here, or maybe longer than a year now. But yeah, Georgina, you know, I was the last person in England to talk to her. She was fine. So that made it harder because she's too young, you know. - Everybody's too young. - Everybody's young, but we're gonna flip forever. And Ken wasn't worried about it because he, you know, he said, I don't know, it'll be fine, you know. I'm not from Earth anyway, so I know what it's like to fly around forever. (laughing) - I love when the daughter's looking at the drawing of Christ on the Cross and says, who's this man flying around? - Yes. - That's such a funny way to think of Jesus. But hearing you say that about Ken is like, I can understand it. - It will reveal that. - Yeah, the like science fiction aspect of the appeal of science fiction. - Not the lead, this is ludicrous, but like, what a way to live as the Star Trek science fiction. - The Star Trek is barefoot. - Yeah. - He wooed me with a big treble, by the way. - Oh, really? - He bought me like a giant, like giant trebles. I was, and he was gonna use, he wanted to use Kirk in a film, a composer biopic on Schubert. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - Interesting. - I know. - The last movie we did on the episode about was William Shatner movies. - Yeah. - Oh, really? - We just talked about, yeah, it was not very kind to him. If I had known that, I know. - I know, well, nobody is. He is a kind of, but that's why Ken felt an affinity because he was kicked about so much. And it was going to be a serious film. And he wanted Rufus Wayne like to play young Schubert. And then-- - Wow, really? - Yeah. This is a good idea for a movie. I'm gonna go on the record. - I'm gonna go on the record. And then he said, you know, Kirk would be Schubert as a ghost for him 'cause he died rather young. And he would be him if he had lived. And he had this, you know, he knew Kirk would do it. I call him Kirk, sorry. - Schatner, they all know who you're talking about. - Yeah. (laughing) - I was gonna go, you know, you have a giant triple and not like tons of little ones like on the ends. Just fill the room. - Just open in every drawer, having them fall out. - Ken liked things big. He was big. - Absolutely. (laughing) - Seemly big. (laughing) - You know, my, John said he didn't have any place to mention it. The thing I'll mention to you that I didn't have any place to mention before we, before we finish up is I put on the Russia house a couple of weeks ago, not having any memory that he was in it. I guess I saw it when I was young before I knew who he was. And he is so far and away the best thing about the movie. That's when I think of that movie now, it's just like, oh, that Ken Russell movie in my head. (laughing) - And he was so proud of it. He's always talked about that movie. He was so proud of his outfit. - Yeah. - It's dire. - We worked together and he really liked his socks were, you know, just right in the red vest and he, but he also said, and they left the best parts on the cutting room floor. (laughing) - I can only imagine what it was like for Chippeezy to direct Ken Russell. Like directing Ken Russell is not something I sure I would have signed up for. - No, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because I was there for the ones that he did later in life and he would just go off and completely in Mr. Nye's for Bernard Rose. - Yeah. - Completely went off and said to Reece Efans, "You're a communist, aren't you?" (laughing) Well, the film was going, it wasn't in the script. You're a communist. You're wearing that pink shirt. - Oh my gosh. (laughing) - Your pink out. And it had a whole really kind of scary interlude about being a professor who was judging Reece Efans when he was trying to get into school. (laughing) It was fabulous. But I remember thinking, "Oh, what is the director?" (laughing) Think of this as just tear away. He was such a force and he was a great actor, yeah. - He's phenomenal in it. He's like a lot of, again, it's like that, John. It's like a Houston thing. You get a monster and you're like, "Oh, what an actor." This guy could have had a career as like an incredibly famous character actor if that's what he had chosen to do. - Yeah, I can't go to downtown, for sure. - Yeah. - For sure, he would have been great in that. - Yeah, he loved that. - He definitely could have done winter kills. I will say that for certain. You could have switched him out with Houston and winter kills and he would have been nine of mine. - I don't think Houston would have liked that. (laughing) - So just as a way of kind of me wrapping up and then I'll shut up, Lisa let you have the last word on this film. From my limited purview of what the Ken Russell legacy is, I kind of feel like there's these three tiers. They're like this first tier of his major feature films. Like the first tier are the ones everyone always brings up and loves. Women in love, the devil's, Tommy, altered states, right? Those are the ones that seem to have universal kind of appeal. The second tier is kind of like slightly more hardcore Ken fans, the boyfriend, listomania, gothic layer of the white worm, right? Those are kind of the, almost kind of the cult. - I'm right with you. - Part of his library. And then there's the third tier, which I feel like are the neglected masterpieces. I feel it's the music lovers, Savage Messiah and Molly. And I think those are my three favorites. - There are my films of his. - I absolutely love them. And they just don't get brought up nearly as much as the rest of them. The masterpieces, that's the one. I mean, I met Ken because of Savage Messiah. That's when I saw that movie. You know, I was a kid and I saw that movie. I went to the diner that was next door to the cinema and wrote down Harry Ben. No, the Lee Brothers lighting. And I said, I wrote a letter to Ken Russell, Cara. And it took two years to get there. Cara Lee Studios. I mean, I don't know why it took two years to get, to get to Ken, it took two years. It obviously took 10 days to get to Lee Brothers lighting. And then Ken dropped by and they gave it to him. And he immediately untouched with me. So that movie, you know, brought us together literally. - Wow, I know you had the correspondence. I had no idea it was because of Savage Messiah. That's magical. What's amazing. And I thought it was so good. - And I have all the letters still, but they're all, they're very Ken, you know, pictures everywhere. Draws all over. - Oh, wow, that's great. I would just say the one you left out of that third tier is "Song of Summer." Which is- - Well, I was talking about the feature films about the TV one "Song of Summer." Yes, absolutely is amazing. Yes, very neglected mask. - Fair enough. - Very, very nice. - Yeah, it's a, you know, how I kind of tear myself on. People should see these films. (laughing) It's like a mission there. But that's back in me, you know. - Yeah, I feel like the devil's has ascended to its rightful place in cinema history. I feel like when you ask cinema files now, people who really know their movies, you know, top 100 movies of all time, they're gonna have the devils in it if they know what they're talking about. And Georgina was in that as well, you know. - Right, yes. - She was so mad because Oliver didn't strip off. (laughing) His boxer's on. She was furious and so when she's beating his chest, she was really mad. (laughing) - That's amazing. (laughing) - She got a rash, she said. Every time she stripped off, she got a terrible rash. She was so nervous about it. (laughing) - But no, you're right, Chris. The devil's, I think, was in that third tier for a long time and then ascended. And I hope Moller does the same thing. It deserves to be up there. - Brian Adams said it was his favorite film. He told him that. - Interesting. - Yeah, that's interesting, but that's my favorite. - It's a really spectacular film. Thank you so much for doing this episode with us. - Oh, thank you for asking me, Chris and Don, it's your two of my favorite people. I still listen to your podcast. - Well, you're still in New York. I gotta ask, aren't you tired of skyscrapers and sasparilla? - Yes. (laughing) - That's what I'm tired of. (laughing) That was for the Moller fans out there or the Ken Russell smaller. (laughing) - I feel honored to watch this film. Every time I put it on, I feel honored to have you on to talk about it, Lacey. I hope we can talk about another one, even if it's another three years, you know, it's just, it's a huge, huge highlight for me. - Yeah, it's always fantastic. - I can talk about it again. (laughing) Yeah. All right, thank you. And thank you at music is life. (laughing) It was for Ken. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]