55 years after it was first released, Ken Russell’s film The Devils finally received an uncut screening at the Cannes Film Festival. But why did it take so long for a fully intact version of this film to see the light of day? Why did Warner Bros., the studio that backed it, go from trying to bury it to touting its re-release?
First released in 1971, The Devils is based on Aldous Huxley‘s 1952 book the Devils of Loudun. Huxley’s work is a non-fiction novel recounting the alleged Loudun possessions of 1634. It centers on Roman Catholic priest Urbain Grandier and an entire convent of Ursuline nuns, who say they were possessed by demons when the priest entered into a pact with the devil. This led to mass hysteria, culminating in several public exorcisms, as well as Grandier and others being executed by burning.
In the film Grandier (Oliver Reed) is the subject of Sister Jeanne’s (Vanessa Redgrave) unrequited love. So this horribly sexually repressed (IYKYK) nun does what anyone would do, accuses him of witchcraft. What follows is a literal orgy of debochery from the nuns. As well as so not-so-subtle knocks at the government and the Catholic Church. This is a Ken Russell film after all.
Gotta Love a Good Femur
From the word go, Warner Bros. heavily censored this film, with two scenes in particular being sticking points. The first runs about 2 and a half minutes and is almost exclusively referred to as the “rape of Christ” scene. In it, nuns strip down a statue of Jesus and begin to simulate sex acts with it. All while a priest watches, approvingly. The second is the “femur scene” where Sister Jeanne masturbates with a charred bone from a recently burned body.
Aside from a censored pan-and-scan VHS home release in 1983, the film really didn’t see the light of day as a legal release until Shudder negotiated the rights in 2017. Even then, the streaming versions were not uncut.
It wasn’t until recently that Warner Bros. decided to finally cave and release a 4K restored uncut version. The Devils is even the inaugural release for its new boutique label Clockwork. Given all of the merging and dividing Warner Bros. and other major companies have been doing, you could argue they just need the money. And yes, the all-mighty dollar is at the heart of most decisions like this.
A Bigger Win
However, most of the film’s early pushback was at the hands of the Catholic Church. Its 1971 premiere at the Venice Film Festival was restricted to critics only due to pressure by the Church to remove it from the lineup. This is when a 111-minute film became a 105-minute film. Even with these cuts, Italy and Finland outright banned the movie, with the former lifting it in 2001. It received an X rating in both the US and the UK. Which, at least in the US at the time, was as good as a ban, since no major theaters would screen it and home video was a distant dream. All of this was done on the grounds of blasphemy.
Over the years, slightly longer censored versions have emerged, but no legal releases have included the aforementioned controversial scenes. Those finally being restored are, in some ways, reclaiming what religions’ stranglehold on the entertainment industry kept back for so long. Things like the Hays Code repressed certain groups of people from even being seen on screen for decades. Its toxic effects still ripple through media in queer coding to this day. Not always in a self-aware fashion, either.
Yes, this may just be Warner Bros. seeing a way to milk cinephiles for a quick buck. But it is still giving us back a brilliant film that deserves to be seen the way the late director imagined.
The Devils will have a small theatrical run at participating theaters starting October 16th. You can watch the trailer for the restoration below:
