The Devils has finally been redeemed. After heavy censorship, director Ken Russell’s baroque drama, based on a real witchcraft trial that took place in Loudun, France, in 1634, was met with disgusted reviews and mediocre box office when it was first released in theaters in 1971. But it lived on as a cult movie, which is how Mark Kermode first saw it on a double bill with The Exorcist at a late-night double feature back in 1979. That night would change the young critic’s life, leading him down a multi-decade rabbit hole that culminated last weekend with the theatrical release of a definitive new 4K restoration, Ken Russell’s The Devils.
Released by a new sub-label called Warner Bros. Clockwork, headed by former NEON executives Spencer Collantes and Christian Parkes, Ken Russell’s The Devils restores two key scenes that were excised from the film back in 1971: the infamous “Rape of Christ” sequence, in which a group of nuns strip nude and attack a statue of Jesus — that one was cut in its entirety — and a scene where Sister Jeanne of the Angels (Vanessa Redgrave) is gifted the suggestively phallic charred femur of Urban Grandier (Oliver Reed). Earlier in the film, the frustrated Sister Jeanne accused Grandier of witchcraft, claiming that he possessed her and her sisters with unholy lust. These charges led directly to Grandier’s execution, and Russell makes the argument that she is a pawn of political forces who want Grandier gone so the walls of Loudun can come down, taking the city’s independence with them.
