Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's

out of ice cream.

Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

Thanks for downloading the Arts and Ideas podcast from BBC Radio 3.

Today, I'm on the way to meet one of my heroes.

We'll be talking about a number of things.

He's a filmmaker, so we'll discuss his own work,

how he imagined a future in which swastikas fluttered over the houses of Parliament,

how he made a film about the birth of communism

on a hillside in 17th century Surrey, about his TV documentaries, about his Oscar.

But here's the thing that makes Kevin Brownlow an unusual figure in cinema history.

Much of his career has been spent in the service of other filmmakers, silent filmmakers, whose work he has preserved, whose stories he recorded when nobody else was asking.

And he's a man who's performed a service to world culture that's comparable, I think, to having dug up Troy or saved the Mona Lisa from destruction.

Because without him, we would have been robbed of one of the greatest films ever made.

A film so advanced that it still seems, to my eyes, like a work from the future.

It's called Napoleon, a five-and-a-half-hour epic made by the French director Abel Gants,

made in 1927, but not shown

as its director intended until over half a century later, and all thanks to Kevin Brownlow.

For financial, technological and legal reasons, it's very rarely shown

and the battles to bring it to the screen would be worth another movie in themselves.

But in November it's revived with a live orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London,

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