{"id":810290,"date":"2026-10-22T11:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T11:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/810290\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T11:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T11:18:13","slug":"mark-kermode-daphne-dentz-on-restoring-ken-russells-the-devils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/810290\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Kermode & Daphne Dentz On Restoring \u2018Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIf you don\u2019t ask, you don\u2019t get, and that\u2019s what Mark Kermode discovered over 20 years ago while trying to put together the definitive version of Ken Russell<\/a>\u2019s badly butchered 1971 film The Devils<\/a>. Thanks to Kermode\u2019s sleuthing, not only did the missing moments turn up, but it also resulted in the one of the surprise hits of the year; this week the film expands on its planned one-week run after taking $1,725m \u2014 a $4,925 per-screen-average \u2014 from 350 locations across North America. Next weekend, it opens in its native UK just in time for Halloween.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnusually for a restoration project, The Devils wasn\u2019t just given a hi-res make-over, it was restored to the original version that Russell handed to Warner Bros. and never saw again, first thanks to the timorous British censor and then the much more scissor-happy MPAA. Based on Aldous Huxley\u2019s 1952 non-fiction book The Devils of Loudon, about a notorious series of demonic possessions alleged to have occurred in the French town in 1634, it was controversial enough for its time, even though nobody ever got to see its most infamous scene, in which naked, rampaging nuns run riot and defile a statue of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

\n\tRussell always believed the scene was missing, never to be found, and, for a time, so did Kermode, until, while snooping around in the Warners archive, he came across a set of shipping logs. One stood out: It was labeled \u201cC-cut 86\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt that point,\u201d says Kermode, \u201cI thought that the missing sequence was maybe 86 seconds long and maybe \u2018C-cut\u2019 meant \u2018Censor cut\u2019.\u201d The archivist, however, wasn\u2019t so sure. \u201cHe said, \u2018I don\u2019t know, but I\u2019m pretty certain it\u2019s not what you\u2019re looking for.\u2019 I said, \u201cOK. I\u2019ll make you a deal. If you call it in and it isn\u2019t what we\u2019re looking for, I\u2019ll never bother you ever again.\u2019 God bless him, he called it in, and then I got a phone call. He said, \u2018OK. The canister came in. We opened it. It smelt of vinegar, so we\u2019ve sent it to be washed. But I looked at the first frame, and it\u2019s just a huge crucifix and there\u2019s a load of nuns\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tGrandier and Sister Jeanne in \u2018Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros. Clockwork<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1971, Ken Russell\u2019s name was synonymous with controversy, and for years the missing scene was presumed to be an act of gratuitous provocation. But in 2004, when Kermode \u2014 with the help of the film\u2019s original editor, Michael Bradsell \u2014 put together a very rough DigiBeta Director\u2019s Cut, with Russell\u2019s blessing, audiences saw that the scene was far from gratuitous. Rather, it is pivotal to the film\u2019s story, in which rival political forces manipulate the fantasies of a disturbed nun, Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave<\/a>), to discredit Loudon\u2019s popular incumbent priest Urbain Grandier (a literally smoldering Oliver Reed).<\/p>\n

\n\tNotes Kermode, \u201cKen had always said that the whole point of the film is that it\u2019s a film about brainwashing. It\u2019s about the use of hysteria as a political tool, and the film is very clear about that. I think, as people recognize today, it\u2019s very satirical in the way that it deals with politics and it\u2019s incredibly contemporary. But that sequence was really important to him, because what it was demonstrating was that, in the middle of this apparently religious enclave, all this is being played out for the simple political end of getting Grandier out and getting the walls of the city knocked down. He said the whole point is that it\u2019s a kind of a pantomime of blasphemy, and if you take it out, you never quite get that point across.\u2019 That sequence is, in the very best sense of the word, hysterical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, how did Mark Kermode\u2019s rough-edged DigiBeta assembly become the luminous restoration that proved to be the hottest ticket in Cannes<\/a> this year? And where does Guillermo Del Toro come into it? <\/p>\n

\n\tTo find out, Deadline spoke to Daphne Dentz, Senior Vice President of Post-Production Creative Services at Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: When did you come on board with this project?<\/p>\n

\n\tDAPHNE DENTZ: I guess it was January [2026], when Christian Parkes reached out to me. I\u2019d never met him before. He was like, \u201cWe really want to restore The Devils and do the Director\u2019s Cut. What do you think about that?\u201d There was also the content licensing team; there\u2019s [my colleague] Robyn Sklaren over there, and she was a huge proponent of getting this greenlit. I think it was sort of a combination of that and Christian\u2019s enthusiasm, which is completely infectious. He\u2019s incredible. It was like the stars aligned, and that was it. Then my team \u2014 the preservation team started researching and looking for assets. Luckily, we had everything \u2014 so we just went for it.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: What do you mean by assets?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: We have a preservation services team, and they\u2019re really experts as regards everything that relates to film assets and sound and audio assets. They went into the archive and scoured for every piece of film. Luckily we had the original camera negative. We had separation masters. We also had deleted scene reels, A\/B reels, and that was the piece that was needed. Initially, we weren\u2019t sure we had everything, but we did.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Is that common? Mark Kermode was saying even Ken Russell didn\u2019t think these things existed\u2026<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: Well, I oversee the Global Media Archive, and I have to say that Warner Bros. \u2014 and this is just not me touting the Warner Brothers philosophy \u2014 our archive is pretty solid. We\u2019ve spent 100 years preserving our assets, and I would say that over the last 10, 15 years, there\u2019s been an even more aggressive attitude around preserving and archiving our assets. We\u2019ve got good tools in place to search. We have a film prep team that literally sits in a room on the studio lot and goes through camera negatives and documents every frame and shot that exists in the OCN [Original Camera Negative]. Essentially, what we did was we pulled the original camera negative and those deleted scenes or those reels, and they went through it, frame by frame, identifying what we had. Then with, the 2004 DigiBeta that we received, our digital conform operator Katie Largay, frame by frame, rebuilt this film.<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tDerek Jarman\u2019s set design for \u2018Ken Russell\u2019s The Devils\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros. Clockwork<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: What\u2019s the first thing you do in approaching a project like this?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: Well, the first part of the process is the research. The second part is the film prep and the sound prep. Then, once we have what we think is all the elements, we start scanning. We\u2019ve got the best scanners in the world. We scanned at full 4K 16-bit, and our colorist, Andrea Chlebak, is amazing. All those scans went into our digital intermediate bay at Water Tower Color, and we just started analyzing it shot by shot. I have to say, when we saw those first scenes, we cried. We couldn\u2019t believe our eyes. The original camera negative was in such good shape. People have never seen this film look as good as it does today.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Did you refer to Ken Russell\u2019s other films? How much was he a part of this reconstruction?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: Well, it\u2019s an interesting question \u2014 may I read something to you? Really, the best way to describe it is the way the colorist described it, because the real challenge was honoring the film\u2019s original aesthetic. We didn\u2019t have a clean visual record of what this film looked like on its first day in the theater. The way she described it is so perfect. She said, \u201cThe previous restoration we don\u2019t believe reflected Ken Russell\u2019s or [cinematographer] David Watkins\u2019 intent. It couldn\u2019t serve as a North Star\u2026 Reference materials couldn\u2019t be trusted. Colorists look for a fingerprint of the filmmaker across other works.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s detective work. Then, she said, she basically read descriptions about how the film felt to watch [at the time]. Words like, \u201challucinogenic\u201d, \u201cbleached\u201d and \u201cCaravaggio\u201d became creative parameters. I mean, this is one of those very special cases where you have a cinematographer who\u2019s shot the most beautiful scenes and composed the most beautiful aspects. Every shot looks like a museum portrait. At least to me, that\u2019s how it felt. And Derek Jarman\u2019s production design is spectacular.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Did you reconstruct it strictly according to the template of what Ken Russell had laid down with the DigiBeta version? Or were there other things \u2014 like a shooting schedule or a continuity schedule \u2014 that you were looking at as well?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: We looked at everything we had. It\u2019s interesting, because our original camera negative was sort of an auto-select, and in the 2004 version, there were a lot of changes. I can get into that a little bit here, which may be helpful. Here\u2019s what our conform artist said. She said, \u201cMultiple reels contained redundant or alternate version scenes that differed from the approved director\u2019s cut reference.\u201d The Rape of Christ sequence, for example, was discovered on a separate role labeled \u201cDeleted scenes\u201d and substantially overlapped with Reel 5 of the OCN while also containing extraneous material not present in the director\u2019s cut and omitting certain shots included in that version. All scanned OCN materials were systematically lined up against the director\u2019s cut reference to identify editorial variances and maintain a comprehensive inventory of missing footage.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Do you approach a project like this in chronological order? Or is there an element of just taking things as you find them?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: Well, the reels are conformed, and it\u2019s typical that you would start from Reel 1 and then just work through. All the material is sent for dirt cleanup, but we also are very sensitive around making the film look new. There\u2019s a balance between the grain and the dirt and the vibe and the look of the film, in terms of keeping it authentic while creating an asset that\u2019s modern \u2014 4K, HDR, SDR, or for digital cinema \u2014 because we didn\u2019t have digital cinema back in \u201971. Keeping all those elements balanced is an art.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Is that the case with all restorations? How do you calibrate the amount of grain and the amount of dirt that you allow back in?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: Well, it\u2019s a great question, and it varies. We think we\u2019re experts at our scan department. They really know film stock, and so there\u2019s an element of understanding what the film stock of the day would look like, and the grain structure of a film from the \u201970s versus the \u201980s and \u201990s. I mean, we do so many films at Warner Bros. from the \u201930s, like The Wizard of Oz, to The Devils, and then to things that are a little bit more recent, like Se7en, for example. Now, in this particular case, we didn\u2019t have [the original] filmmakers to come in and tell us, \u201cThis is what the film should look like.\u201d But Guillermo [Del Toro] did come and sit with us. I don\u2019t want to speak for him, but he was very enthusiastic about what he was seeing.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Could you expand? What was Guillermo\u2019s role? <\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: He came in and reviewed the work with our colorist. We always need help. We always are looking for some direction. Andrea is really, like I said, a detective. We looked for one-sheets and things that were on the internet. Then Guillermo came in, and one of the things he was very interested in was the tiles in Derek Jarman\u2019s production design \u2014 the whites, and how difficult it is to achieve the whites in a film like this. He blessed it. He came in and he said, \u201cYep. You\u2019re on the right track \u2014 this looks the way that it should look.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: The print that was screened in Cannes looked like a movie one might have watched in the \u201870s before the print became degraded after doing the rounds of too many cinemas.<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: That\u2019s so wonderful to hear, because we\u2019re so close to it now, it\u2019s hard for us to see. The goal is always to honor the aesthetic, the creative intent, and to not waver in that and to stay true to what we think Ken Russell would\u2019ve wanted. We\u2019re really careful.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: What appeals to you about this work?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: This particular film appeals to me on so many levels. I mean, the first thing is just from the most basic sense of the beauty of it. I felt like every shot \u2014 even the ones that are kind of grotesque \u2014 is incredible. It\u2019s a beautifully shot film, and I have spent my whole career looking at images in dark rooms. When the first shot opens, you\u2019re just pulled right into this world of incredible cinematography and incredible production design. The first film I ever saw that I can remember was Ken Russell\u2019s film Women in Love. [Laughs.] I was probably three or four years old, and my mother took me to the theater! She probably shouldn\u2019t have, but it was late at night, and I think she thought I was going to sleep through it. She just recently passed away, and I wish that she could have seen this. She didn\u2019t know that we were going to do The Devils, and I think she would\u2019ve been thrilled.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Do you have a dream project that you\u2019d like to restore?<\/p>\n

\n\tDENTZ: This was a dream project. This really is a dream project because it has all the elements of never been seen or haven\u2019t been seen in this form ever really. I mean, the folks at Cannes, they saw this film in a way that I don\u2019t think anyone had ever really seen this film before, in 4K resolution. For sound, we had only a mono track, and we\u2019ve done our best with that \u2014 in some cases, we had to create sound using multiple assets and elements. But for sure, seeing it in the theater is spectacular, it really is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you don\u2019t ask, you don\u2019t get, and that\u2019s what Mark Kermode discovered over 20 years ago while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[160823,96,228581,2839,261645,56,54,55,107881,231222],"class_list":["post-810290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes","tag-entertainment","tag-ken-russell","tag-movies","tag-the-devils","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vanessa-redgrave","tag-warner-bros-clockwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}