Overview
- A newly restored 4K director’s cut of Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils has premiered at Cannes and is playing in select New York theaters in a version that reintegrates footage long excised from earlier releases.
- Film critic Mark Kermode discovered the cut material in the Warner Bros. archives in 2002 and helped oversee the reconstruction that produced the uncensored director’s cut.
- The reissue has reopened dispute over the film’s graphic sequences, including sexualized religious imagery and depictions of torture that prompted bans and heavy censorship when the film first appeared in 1971.
- Critics and audiences have responded with renewed interest, with reviews noting the film’s formal craft and its framing as Russell’s self-described “one political film” about state brainwashing and institutional power.
- Distributors plan wider rollouts after the current festival and New York runs, and the restoration has prompted fresh conversations about authorship, archival responsibility, and how restored films change a title’s cultural life.