Ken Russell’s The Devils voted top DVD in BFI poll
Ken Russell’s 1971 period shocker The Devils has been named the favourite BFI DVD/Blu-ray following a British Film Institute poll of 6,500 voters.
With 672 votes, The Devils narrowly fended off the 1954 production of Seven Samurai which came in second place with 667 votes the BFI note.
From a list of over 300 titles all managed to gain at least one vote. The titles included world cinema classics, UK archive compilations and long-lost favourites of British film and television such as Ghost Stories at Christmas all proving popular.
F.W. Murnau’s gothic horror Nosferatu (1922) was the highest-voted silent film, while Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1970) was the most popular of the BFI’s Flipside releases, dedicated to rediscovering lost pockets of British cinema. The number one archive title was the GPO Film Unit’s Night Mail (1936), which rhythmically sets documentary footage of a London-Scotland mail train to a poem by W.H. Auden. – BFI
With the lure of a prize of 50 BFI DVD/Blu-rays of their choice, pollers voted via email or social media for their three favourite discs from the label. The winner – picked at random – was Giustina from London, who voted for Ken Russell’s The Devils, Jane Arden and Jack Bond’s Anti-Clock (1979) and Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel (1948).
Top Ten BFI DVD/Blu-Rays
