Warner Bros. Pictures. Courtesy of Alamy.
Filmmaker Ken Russell’s infamous 1971 feature “The Devils” is coming to the Cannes Film Festival this year with a whole new, uncensored 4K restoration reports World of Reel.
Seen as one of the most major restoration announcements in years, the release hails from the recently announced new Warner Bros. specialty label Warner Bros. Clockwork.
The film is an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s novel “The Devils of Loudon” and stars Oliver Reed as 17th-century rogue French Priest Urbain Grandier, who becomes the target of a political witch hunt.
Using the testimony of a mad hunchbacked nun (Vanessa Redgrave), the hysterical inquisitor Father Barre (Michael Gothard) uses torture and violence to whip up the entire city into a rabid carnal frenzy.
The film’s graphic portrayal of violent and sexual content, combined with religion, originally received an X rating and was banned in several countries or heavily edited for exhibition in others. To this day, it remains one of the most controversial films of all time, and even the edited versions are hard to find either on physical media or streaming.
This screening is reportedly described as a new and uncensored 4K restoration assembled from the original camera negative and will include extra footage. It is being seen as the closest possible version to Russell’s original vision.
Famed British critic and biographer Mark Kermode and Ken’s wife Elisabeth Russell will be in attendance at the Cannes screening. It’s hoped the screening will come ahead of a 4K UHD home release of the film at a later date, but Warners has not confirmed such a release as yet.
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