For decades, The Devils was a film people knew by reputation rather than by sight. Cut, restricted and hard to find in the form its director intended, it became cinema's great forbidden object. On 30 October it comes back in a 4K restoration made from the original camera negative, in the cut Ken Russell wanted audiences to see.
The story is old and ugly. In the French town of Loudun in the seventeenth century, a charismatic priest, Urbain Grandier, is destroyed by a mix of political ambition, sexual hysteria and religious opportunism. Russell drew on Aldous Huxley's account of the case, and the film is as much about how power manufactures a scandal as about the possession itself. Oliver Reed plays Grandier and Vanessa Redgrave plays the sister who becomes the centre of the storm.
Russell made it in 1971, and it won best director at Venice that year. The restoration premiered in Cannes Classics, which tells you how the film is now regarded. The shock has not gone, but what registers more strongly today is the craft. Derek Jarman's white, tiled, brutalist version of a walled city still looks like nothing else, and Peter Maxwell Davies's score gives the whole thing a rasping, medieval pulse.
The re-release is via BFI Distribution and Warner Bros, covering the UK and Ireland. That means BFI Southbank and cinemas around the country, so there is no need to travel to see it. A big screen matters here. The film is built from architecture, crowds and sound, and a laptop flattens all three.
Go with the right expectations. This is a serious, punishing and frequently grotesque film, made by a director who never learned restraint and would have considered it a weakness. It is not a casual date night. It is, though, one of the great British films of its decade and a rare chance to see it as it was shot.
There is more to come. A full Ken Russell retrospective follows at BFI Southbank in July and August 2027, so this release works as an opening move. See The Devils first, then decide how deep into Russell you want to go. A good rule is to book the first weekend, while the restoration is still the main event, and to eat beforehand rather than after.
Best for A late screening with someone who has strong views about British cinema.
