{"id":464732,"date":"2026-05-28T17:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/464732\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T17:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T17:36:08","slug":"ken-russells-the-devils-the-coolest-film-at-cannes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/464732\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils\u2019: The Coolest Film At Cannes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen the ticketing system opened for booking at 8am, four days before its world premiere at this year\u2019s Cannes<\/a> Film Festival, Ken Russell<\/a>\u2019s The Devils<\/a> sold out all 452 seats at the Salle Bu\u00f1uel in under 60 seconds \u2014 55 years after it was first released. Except, the truth is, Russell\u2019s film, an adaptation of Aldous Huxley\u2019s 1952 novel The Devils of Loudon, was never actually released in a cut that its director wanted people people to see it in. Based on the true story of a Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft in rural France in 1634, The Devils featured violence and nudity that still seems strong today. Joined by Russell\u2019s widow Lisi, British film historian Mark Kermode introduced the Director\u2019s Cut to a veritable who\u2019s who of movie critics, plus special guest Peter Jackson.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Deadline after the screening, Kermode revealed that the process began in January of this year, at a meeting in Berlin with Christian Parkes and Spencer Collante.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cChristian and Spencer walk in,\u201d Kermode recalled, \u201cand I go, \u2018Right. It\u2019s Warner Bros., so it\u2019s either The Exorcist or The Devils\u201d \u2014 famously two of Kermode\u2019s specialist subjects \u2014 \u201cbut I know for a fact that it\u2019s not The Exorcist. So, what do you want to do with The Devils?\u2019 They said, \u2018We really want to do the Director\u2019s Cut, and we think it\u2019s happening.\u2019 I was completely speechless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo explain Kermode\u2019s astonishment, you have to understand the censorship battles that Ken Russell\u2019s film faced, both at home with the BBFC and in the US, with the much stricter MPAA. \u201cThe short version of this story,\u201d said Kermode, \u201cis that Ken ended up with the British X-rated version, which was, for as long as anyone can remember, the definitive version of The Devils, but was missing stuff that Ken had always regretted. The US R-rated version was just a really severely truncated version of that cut, and, actually, one of the biggest problems was that after The Devils had finished its run in the X-rated cut [in the UK], the 35mm prints were taken and cut to conform with the R-rated version in America. So, for a long time, even getting the British X-rated cut was very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scene that came to typify the elusive Director\u2019s Cut is a scene best described as a religious freakout, in which a posse of supposedly possessed nuns cavort naked with an effigy of Christ. Recalled Kermode, \u201cI said to Ken, \u2018Well, what happened to it?\u2019 He said, \u2018Literally, the last time I remember seeing it was in a roll of film, and it was sitting next to the editing machine \u2014 and then it was gone. As far as I\u2019m concerned, it\u2019s lost.\u2019 There was one still, an overhead shot of them all lying around the statue of Christ. That was pretty much the only thing that existed of that scene. I, being me, said, \u2018Ken, we\u2019ll find it.\u2019 He said, \u2018You won\u2019t.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHow and where that missing footage was subsequently found \u2014 and in near-mint condition too \u2014will be covered in a future piece closer to the film\u2019s release date in October. But it speaks to Clockwork\u2019s intent that the company began with such a notorious title and took it to Cannes in the space of just four months.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\u2018Ken<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCannes Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\tSaid Parkes, \u201cAs far as the process goes, it all goes back to the very first meetings that I had with Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy at Warner Bros., when we were talking about creating Clockwork. We talked about everything we could do, both the opportunities and the potential. One of the things we said was, \u2018If our remit \u2014 if our motivation \u2014 is to support great films and great filmmakers, could we go back into the archives, and into the library, and pull out some of those films out that perhaps weren\u2019t judged correctly at the time? There\u2019s an opportunity now to introduce them to new audiences in new and fresh ways \u2014 can we do that?\u2019 They said, \u2018Yeah, absolutely.\u2019 I was like, \u2018Great, we\u2019ve got some titles that we\u2019d love to work with,\u2019 and they were like, \u2018Go do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNext thing, we\u2019re in a meeting with the team that oversees the archives, the library, all of home entertainment, and, miraculously, they were like, \u201cYeah. OK. Let\u2019s get into it.\u201d Obviously, we were pleasantly surprised and mildly shocked. Even at the point where we sat down with Mark, we were still waiting for something to happen, for someone would say, \u2018No, we can\u2019t do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSadly, Russell died in 2011, aged 84, and never got to see this superb restoration, although he did get to see a version of his Director\u2019s Cut, albeit in DigiBeta form, in 2004 at the NFT in London. Introducing the screening with Kermode, Russell\u2019s wife Lisi recalled that, even in such a rudimentary format, Russell was delighted to see his vision back on screening, telling her, \u201cI\u2019ve got my rhythm back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSaid Kermode, \u201cThe great thing for me about the screening in Cannes was Lisi being there, because, honestly, I thought this was never going to happen. And Lisi mentioned something that everyone forgets: Ken always wanted to be a dancer, and when he said to her, \u2018I\u2019ve got my rhythm back,\u2019 he meant it. I thought that was such a beautiful thing to say. I mean, it\u2019s all about the rhythm of the work as a whole. That main sequence, when you lose it, the film loses its rhythm. It\u2019s like it missteps somehow because the rhythm of that sequence is really important. I thought Lisi really set the tone for the screening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKen Russell\u2019s The Devils will screen at Il Cinema Ritrovato (June 20-28)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the ticketing system opened for booking at 8am, four days before its world premiere at this year\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[27993,6403,146,85,46,216162,216163],"class_list":["post-464732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-ken-russell","tag-the-devils"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}