Unpacking the 2026 Cannes Sensation: Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ Restored to Glory

“Do you remember the first time your thoughts were turned to evil things?”

Whenever the film The Devils is mentioned, it inevitably sparks a deep dive into the topic of censorship. This 1971 historical drama, centered around a lascivious priest accused of witchcraft, stands as one of the most controversial films ever made. So contentious was its content that the full version envisioned by its late director Ken Russell has remained largely unseen until now. At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a pristine 4K restoration, meticulously managed by critic Mark Kermode and slated for release by Warner Bros’ Clockwork imprint, became the most sought-after ticket, attracting a full house and a line of hopeful attendees stretching to another floor. Those fortunate to secure a seat witnessed a cinematic rebirth, its eccentric brilliance matched only by its contemporary relevance.

Rich in bawdy entertainment, spiritual sensuality, and potent political commentary, The Devils is an undeniably peculiar film. Early in the movie, for example, an alligator is casually tossed from a window. Such scenes have solidified its reputation, often targeted for censorship. Inspired by historical events as recounted in Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun, Russell’s film portrays the life of 17^th century Roman Catholic priest Urbain Grandier. Played by Oliver Reed, who delivers a performance that both sweats and smolders, Grandier leads the fortified city of Loudun amidst a crippling plague. His political clashes with King Louis XIII, depicted with flamboyance by Graham Armitage, and the king’s cunning advisor Cardinal Richelieu, played by Christopher Logue, lead to accusations of demonic possession. These proceedings echo Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc, albeit with considerably more nudity.

The film serves as a stark warning against the dangerous union of Church and State, a theme that resonates strongly in today’s world, with rising religious extremism influencing politics globally. The narrative critiques the moral policing of bodies and sexualities as tools for political manipulation. King Louis, Richelieu, and their cartoonish allies exploit Sister Jeanne des Anges, a hunchbacked abbess portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave, using her unreciprocated love for Grandier to coerce her convent into falsely accusing him of possession by unleashing their repressed desires in a courtroom spectacle.

The trial reaches a hedonistic peak with an infamous orgy involving a statue of Christ, a scene that has sparked controversy and remained largely unseen outside a brief 2002 London screening, following Kermode’s rediscovery of the footage. Far from mere blasphemous provocation, this sequence underscores the Catholic Church’s inadvertent glorification of Grandier. While his promiscuous behavior incurs their wrath, it paradoxically draws him nearer to the human, flawed Christ they refuse to acknowledge. This alignment is subtly woven into the narrative, portraying Grandier as a man who, through suffering for others’ sins, becomes more Christlike than either the Church or the monarchy ever envisioned.

A similarly censored scene that makes its way back into the runtime involves a nun masturbating with a charred human femur. It sounds ludicrous on paper, but remains morbidly and amusingly fulfilling in context — though the less revealed about it before viewers have had the chance to experience it, the better. The delights of this definitive cut, however, aren’t limited to these excised moments. The painstaking 4K restoration, from the original 35mm camera negatives, is an audio-visual miracle, appearing as clearly and vividly as anything shot today. However, its grandiose set and costume designs can’t be taken for granted either, as they imbue The Devils with a tactility that tickles the senses. It’s a lavish, un-real world that shouldn’t exist, but clearly does, born of ceremonial robes and uncanny shadows, and shot from all sorts of mystifying angles, which make the movie feel alive in all the most twisted ways.

Through blood, sweat, sacrilegious visions, and untamed bodily writhing, Russell’s operatic expression of desire — and the need to control it — remains both an elevated work of nunsploitation, as well as a grounded piece of artistic agitprop, fiercely rebuking the hijacking of cinema, religion and eroticism by political agendas. It has so terrified the moral arbiters of “good taste” that they’ve single-handedly Streisand Effect-ed it into the upper echelons of the confrontational arthouse canon. Though in watching the film today, it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t have struck a nerve regardless and enraptured the imagination, even if it had been left alone. There’s no way to be sure, but perhaps overdue, unfettered access to its complete version, which audiences are finally about to have, will tell us more about the ways in which The Devils could have, and should have, belonged to culture at large.

Siddhant Adlakha (@SiddhantAdlakha) is a New York-based film critic and video essay writer originally from Mumbai. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and his work has appeared in the New York Times, Variety. the Guardian, and New York Magazine.