{"id":489554,"date":"2026-05-17T18:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T18:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/489554\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T18:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T18:42:12","slug":"blood-blasphemy-and-boning-ken-russells-the-devils-at-cannes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/489554\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood, Blasphemy and Boning: Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ at Cannes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTypically, the Cannes Classics section is not one of the festival\u2019s major noise-makers. Mostly comprising restorations of classic titles and new documentaries about film history, it is, for most attendees who don\u2019t specifically work in repertory cinema, a place to take a breather, to dip into the pleasures of the old amid the whirling rush of the new, at least if your schedule permits. Rarely is a Cannes Classics screening the hot ticket of the festival. But so it was in the early days of this year\u2019s edition, as securing a place at the Thursday night unveiling of a new 4K restoration of \u201cThe Devils\u201d \u2014 British auteur Ken Russell<\/a>\u2018s incendiary 1971 imagining of the 17th-century Loudun possessions \u2014 became a critical challenge.<\/p>\n

\n\tI got lucky. The festival\u2019s ticketing system provided as soon as booking opened four days prior. Many others did not. Cue a lot of messages from friends and colleagues politely enquiring whether I was definitely planning to use that ticket \u2014 yes, sorry, I was \u2014 and publicists checking in to see if their ticket-wrangling skills were needed. The day of the screening, hopefuls repeatedly, feverishly refreshed the booking page, waiting for last-minute returns; outside the festival\u2019s Bu\u00f1uel cinema, where the screening was starting within the hour, I saw two men embrace each other when their patience finally paid off. <\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a lot of anxious energy surrounding a screening of a 55-year-old film that hasn\u2019t been hard to see \u2014 in one form or another \u2014 in recent times. But that \u201cone form or another\u201d caveat is pretty crucial: After being dogged by censorship for so much of its lifetime, Russell\u2019s masterpiece still carries the aura of a suppressed or forbidden film, or most tantalizingly of all, a dangerous one. Unless you\u2019ve really kept on top of its release history, you might be unsure of which cut you\u2019ve seen \u2014 though if you have seen one with the infamous, trouble-making \u201cRape of Christ\u201d sequence not excised, you certainly won\u2019t have forgotten that detail.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so this Cannes screening \u2014 promising not just a visually immaculate experience, assembled from the original camera negative, but a complete and uncut one \u2014 had a pleasing ring of comprehensive authority to it. After all, it was being presented, alongside Russell\u2019s widow Lisi Tribble, by Mark Kermode, the British critic who has fought longest and hardest to have Russell\u2019s original vision protected and preserved. (Kermode is also a proudly vocal Cannes agnostic: If he was drawn to the Croisette to present something, it was surely an occasion.) I\u2019d seen the complete cut of \u201cThe Devils\u201d before, but not with this degree of ceremony and anticipation: Sitting inside the Bu\u00f1uel as latecomers tensely scanned the rows for free spaces, with guests including Honorary Palme d\u2019Or winner Peter Jackson<\/a> already seated, you\u2019d have sworn the film was about to be premiered for the first time.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor many in the room, though, it was an altogether new discovery: When Kermode began his intro by asking who had never seen the film before, it seemed the majority of hands went up. They\u2019ve come to it at the right time. The restoration (which will receive a theatrical release in October) is a stunner, in particular sharpening the film\u2019s stylized black-and-white-and-blood-and-mud color palette to glistening effect, and the film, well, remains like nothing you\u2019ve ever seen before. (Even if you have seen it before, it reveals new facets and aspects and curiosities every time.) Among the first-timers was my fellow Variety critic Siddhant Adlakha who, when I asked him his thoughts, described it with a grin as \u201ckookier than I expected.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s not wrong. It\u2019s a film about severely horrible historical events: the downfall and eventual execution of 17th-century Roman Catholic priest Urbain Grandier (here an unrepentant horndog played with lascivious brilliance by Oliver Reed), accused of witchcraft by a corrupt Church after a convent under his watch claimed demonic possession. But the great joy of \u201cThe Devils\u201d remains how ripe and camp and sensual and funny it is, qualities indulged at full tilt by Russell (not a director who even knew the meaning of \u201chalf\u201d) in all aspects from performance to production design to orgy choreography.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two scenes everybody knows about in \u201cThe Devils\u201d are the two that not everybody has seen: the aforementioned \u201cRape of Christ\u201d setpiece, in which a horde of nude nuns sexually defile a statue of Jesus, and what we shall call a different kind of boning scene, in which Vanessa Redgrave\u2019s hunchbacked abbess Sister Jeanne des Anges masturbates with the charred femur of the newly burned-at-the-stake Grandier. <\/p>\n

\n\tThese moments were always intended to shock and\/or delight, but in the full, heaving context of \u201cThe Devils,\u201d they don\u2019t stand out as try-hard provocations. Especially minus the impositions of any censors, the complete film stands as such a loud, lavish, full-hearted protest against forces that would restrict our thoughts, acts and desires \u2014 be it the Catholic Church or a film ratings board \u2014 that its most violent excesses feel not just titillating but truthful in expression. As Kermode reminded the audience in his intro, Russell described \u201cThe Devils\u201d as \u201cmy most \u2014 indeed my only \u2014 political film,\u201d and its rallying cry against conservative brainwashing is still pretty resonant in 2026, with freedom of expression, religion and sexuality now feeling like rights that can\u2019t be taken for granted.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s certainly grander and riskier and more untamed than anything else at what has been a very solid Cannes Film Festival<\/a> so far \u2014 rich in good, meaningful films and even one or two transcendent ones, but thus far lacking the kind of new, declarative lightning rod that instantly becomes the stuff of festival lore, like David Cronenberg\u2019s \u201cCrash,\u201d Gaspar No\u00e9\u2019s \u201cIrreversible\u201d or Lars von Trier\u2019s \u201cAntichrist.\u201d If the film does have a spiritual analog in this year\u2019s Cannes program, it might be Jane Schoenbrun\u2019s gleefully received postmodern slasher movie \u201cTeenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,\u201d a film in thrall to the once-forbidden pleasures of the video nasty, and celebratory of cinema\u2019s power to break taboos for us, turning us on in the process. \u201cThe Devils\u201d isn\u2019t originally a piece of Cannes history (in fact, it played Venice in its time, picking up Best Director), but it has, both graciously and outrageously, loaned this year\u2019s fest its eruptive, corruptive legacy. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Typically, the Cannes Classics section is not one of the festival\u2019s major noise-makers. Mostly comprising restorations of classic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[11519,18,117,19,17,157725,327,55595,213623],"class_list":["post-489554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ken-russell","tag-movies","tag-peter-jackson","tag-the-devil"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/489555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}