By Some Miracle, The Uncut Version of Ken Russell’s The Devils Is Finally Coming To Theaters
Raw, uncut.
Not that long ago, there was reason to believe that The Devils might never be seen again. Although it was released in theaters back in 1971 — it did especially well in the U.K., where it was the fifth-highest grossing film of that year — by the turn of the millennium Ken Russell’s hysterically stylized dramatization of a notorious 17th-century French witchcraft trial was practically lost media.
Oddly, the studio that made the film was also responsible for suppressing it: After putting out the film on a censored, pan-and-scan VHS in 1983, Warner Bros. locked The Devils away, declining to release it on any subsequent home-video format and turning down offers from multiple distributors who were interested in licensing it. The reason? According to Russell biographer Mark Kermode, executives at the studio found Russell’s film “distasteful.”
That has since changed, to say the least. On May 6, Warner Bros. announced that it will re-release The Devils in theaters this October through its new sub-label Warner Bros. Clockwork, led by former Neon marketing executive Christian Parkes. This comes immediately following the news that Warner Bros.’ new 4K restoration of the film, assembled from the original camera negative, is set to premiere in the Classics sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. That’s surprising enough, but the big news is that this new 4K restoration will run 114 minutes.
Redgrave’s performance was dismissed as “ridiculous” by critics, which of course means that it’s great.
“So what?” you might ask. This brings us back to the “distasteful” comment. From the moment it was completed, The Devils has been subject to censorship and condemnation, targeted for what its detractors believe is a blasphemous blend of sexuality and religion. (To be fair, its defenders would probably agree; for them, the blasphemy is part of the appeal.) The Catholic Church condemned the film before its release, calling for the Venice Film Festival to pull it from its lineup; they did not succeed, but the campaign spooked Warner Bros. enough that the studio cut the movie down to 105 minutes for its theatrical release.
Thanks to the efforts of people like Kermode — as well as Russell’s widow, Lisi Tribble Russell, who has devoted herself to advocating for her late husband’s work after his death in 2011 — The Devils has screened with key sequences restored in recent years. (It’s also popped up intermittently on streaming services since Shudder first negotiated the rights back in 2017, but never for long.) Interestingly, this new release of The Devils runs a full three minutes longer than previous “uncut” versions of the film, which run around 111 minutes long (give or take a few seconds, depending on the encoding).
So what’s been restored? Before his death, Russell said that he removed “a few frames” here and there from the film’s torture scenes. But there are two sequences in particular that have been sticking points for censors. The more notorious of them is the “Rape of Christ,” a sexually frenzied free-for-all filmed in Russell’s heightened Baroque style in which a group of nuns strip nude and attack a statue of Jesus as a priest approvingly looks on. That scene reportedly ran a full two and a half minutes. The other is shorter, but equally provocative, as co-star Vanessa Redgrave is seen masturbating with the charred femur of a man she accused of witchcraft earlier in the film. (The “femur scene” has been recovered, and appears in the 111-minute version of the film; it’s not graphic, but it is pretty demented.)
Priest or no, it’d be a shame to take a mustache as luxurious as Oliver Reed’s out of the dating pool.
Even the parts of The Devils that made it past the censors are provocative, like the sequence where Redgrave’s Sister Jeanne has a vision of local priest Father Grandier (Oliver Reed) — for whom she harbors a twisted, barely repressed lust — as Jesus Christ coming down from the cross.
What really makes The Devils dangerous is not any individual image, however, but the contrast it sets up between Grandier, who regularly breaks his vow of celibacy but is otherwise a good man, and Sister Jeanne, who follows all of the Church’s rules but is a spiteful, malignant person who causes nothing but pain for others. In Russell’s vision, the Church and the King are equally corrupt, and both actively stand in the way of believers achieving true communion with God. So you can see what the Catholic Church might not like about that.
If nothing else, it’s a sign of the church’s decreasing cultural influence that The Devils is finally coming out in theaters, as well as a testament to the cult that has grown around the film. In a press release, Clockwork touts this new 4K as the “definitive” cut of the film, saying in a press release that its version “[references] the edit [Russell] privately constructed in 2004” and “is the uncut and unfiltered theatrical experience that Russell always envisioned — and the first time the film will be presented restored and in 4K.”
