The BFI is thrilled to announce that it will be releasing one of the ‘most-wanted’ British films of all time, Ken Russell’s bold and brilliant religious drama The Devils (1971), on DVD for the first time.
Forty years ago, The Devils caused outrage amongst audiences and critics after one of the longest-running battles with the BBFC was resolved, and the film was finally seen in cinemas. Now recognised as a landmark in British cinema history the film will at long last get its DVD premiere on 19 March 2012, in the original UK ‘X’ certificate version.
Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave give magnificent performances in what remains Ken Russell’s most dazzling and controversial film – for which he won the prize for Best Director, Foreign Film at the Venice Film Festival. Based on John Whiting’s stage-play and Aldous Huxley’s novel, the film charts the seventeenth-century events that took place in the French city of Loudun. Reed plays priest Urbain Grandier, and Redgrave is Sister Jeanne, whose erotic obsession with him fuels the hysterical fervour that sweeps through the convent.
Derek Jarman designed the striking, highly memorable sets and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies composed a supremely well-matched score for Russell’s arresting depiction of the breakdown of civilisation.
