Ken Russell's "The Devils" arrives in American cinemas October 16, marking the completion of a restoration project that consumed more than five decades. The 1971 film, one of cinema's most notorious and suppressed works, finally receives its proper theatrical release in the United States after years of legal battles, censorship battles, and technical challenges that kept it in the vault.
Russell's adaptation of John Whiting's play "The Devils of Loudun" remains a provocation. The film concerns a 17th-century French convent gripped by mass hysteria and demonic possession, which becomes a pretext for religious authority and sexual repression to collide violently on screen. Russell's baroque visual style and explicit content made the film impossible to exhibit through conventional distribution channels for decades. Various versions circulated only in fragmentary form or through bootlegs among cinephiles willing to seek them out.
The newly released trailer suggests the restoration honors Russell's original vision without compromise. The director, who died in 2011, never saw his film properly restored or screened in theaters during his lifetime. His widow, Vivian Russell, championed the project alongside restoration experts who worked to reconstruct damaged elements and recover the director's intended cut from archival materials scattered across multiple continents.
The technical restoration itself became a feat of detective work. Original negatives suffered deterioration common to films from that era. Color timing required painstaking analysis to match Russell's intended palette. Sound design, equally crucial to Russell's sensory assault on viewers, demanded careful reconstruction from surviving audio elements. The team consulted Russell's own notes and correspondence to make decisions about which version represented his true vision.
"The Devils" occupies a peculiar place in film history. Released during an era of increasingly permissive cinema, it nonetheless proved too extreme even for audiences primed by "A Clockwork Orange" and "Last Tango in Paris." Religious groups mobilized against theatrical releases. Distributors faced litigation. The film vanished from commercial circulation almost immediately after its initial release. Some prints were destroyed. Others entered monasteries of bootleggers and underground film societies where dedicated fans preserved its memory.
The restoration raises questions about censorship, artistic intent, and how we preserve challenging work. Russell never compromised his vision to appease gatekeepers. His films pushed cinema toward baroque excess and psychological extremity. "The Devils" remains his most audacious experiment in that direction.
Critics and film historians have long argued that "The Devils" deserved restoration and proper theatrical exhibition. The project's completion validates that position. Seeing the film as Russell intended, on a theater screen with restored sound and image, offers contemporary audiences a chance to engage with one of cinema's most willfully transgressive artists on his own terms.
The October release positions "The Devils" as an event film for serious cinephiles and students of film restoration. It signals growing willingness among distributors to take commercial risks on challenging legacy titles. The success of this release may influence future restoration projects involving films deemed too controversial for mainstream distribution.