While I am very glad for the enthusiasm accompanying its long overdue restoration, truth is, The Devils is becoming one of those frustrating films for me, because (as with Blade Runner and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) I have now, in the name of keeping up, felt obliged to watch multiple versions of it, more times then I necessarily would have chosen to, en route to the "final" cut; I have seen at least five different edits of the film, over the years, which is at least three more than I really ever needed to see (especially given that I've seen some of those cuts two or three times in themselves). I have seen more directors' cuts replaced with "final" cuts than I have ever needed to, in general, and do not need this to be another such film.
Because it's actually not my favourite Ken Russell film! (Women in Love would be that, with The Devils placing third after Altered States). While I enjoy the spectacle, the craft, and the audacity of the film, the truth is that I do not find, maybe because it's so chaotic, that it is an easy film to emotionally or even thematically engage with. It's a film you WATCH, more than you feel (or think), a film that is so caught up in its excesses and its relentless spectacle that you lose sight of various ironies and nuances: like that Grandier is perfectly comfortable when he's at his most debauched, early in the film, and that his sufferings only really begin when he tries to redeem himself (if he'd just stayed debauched, all would have been fine!). Redemption and suffering go hand in hand, at least in the world of the film, but you're so overwhelmed by the orgying vomiting naked nuns that you don't necessarily take the film's themes in, at least not as deeply as you might want to. (I know there are admirers of the Huxley book who do not admire the Russell film, and presumably this is partially why).
Still, I was prepared, to give the film one big final theatrical screening, to see it properly restored. I anticipated feeling some relief, in fact: finally, there would be closure, a chance to just stop seeing the film every few years, to let the film, now restored to its proper state, go off into the world without further support or commentary, like, say, Clearcut or such: There, it's out! Our work (the work of the film's advocates and afficionados) is done, the cut is the cut, it's final, it's done, we're not going to CGI out the guns or upgrade the special effects or fix the greens (Sorcerer) or decide, "Wait, no, we made a mistake"-it. It's like a band on a farewell tour that never ends.
That relief is not forthcoming. The team behind the restoration mess it up in one key scene -- one of the two major restored segments, the so-called "R@pe of Christ". In the best of the two bootleg versions of the film that I have seen -- a blu ray that came out a few years ago with Spanish subtitles and all the missing material restored, and at the proper aspect ratio, unlike the DVD bootleg of even further back -- the R@pe of Christ plays out with only a couple of interruptions. There is a brief cut to the start of the "orgy"; we cut to a scene where Grandier -- Oliver Reed -- consecrates some bread in a private ritual. We go back to the nuns and the arrival of the King in disguise, preparing to play a prank with his alleged vial of Christ's blood. Around the time he breaks that out, there is a brief cut of Grandier pouring wine into a chalice, also for mass (the "real" blood of Christ as opposed to the King's empty case). But mostly, besides that one shot of the wine, we stay on the nun-stuff, which plays out in a long flowing sequence that (because it is not interrupted) builds to a pretty intense fever-pitch. It is bookended by Grandier, and has one brief cutaway to the chalice, and that's it. That's how, I believe, the film played in 2002, when Ken Russell was still alive and supervising the edit, which was also then described as a director's cut; because the two subsequently bootlegged versions of that film (presumably based on that cut), I believe both follow that exact trajectory (I haven't double-checked the DVD but I suspect my memory serves; I did check the even better Spanish blu).
That is not what we are seeing in theatres now. For some reason, the people behind this new edit decide to cut away more often. It reads like the Peckinpets edit of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which omits the "what you want and what you get" line: an infuriating bit of self-licensing to do what one will with a film in the name of the "director". It isn't the first such instance (the censoring of the breasts from Love Streams has also been defended by Criterion as representing the filmmaker's true will). No doubt they will say that Ken Russell wanted more cutaways. But if those excessive, choppy cuts, seemingly done to hammer home the parallels between virtue (Grandier's simple mass) and vice (the chicanery in the church), were what Russell "really" wanted, he surely would have shot material to cut away to. The team behind this restoration seems so intent on punctuating the orgy with shots of Oliver Reed they actually REPEAT the consecration and the breaking of bread. Exact shot, twice -- a sloppiness Russell would not have abided and which I don't believe IS in the cut of the film that originally screened some 24 years ago. It is distracting, unnecessary, and amateurish-looking, a sloppy little continuity error apparently edited INTO the film for this restoration, if I've watched closely enough, and which lessens the impact and flow of the orgy. We already know that a contrast is being established between his faithful ritual and the debauchery, thanks. We do not need to zip back and forth: the class was paying attention, so there is no need for teacher to read that sentence twice.
And I mean, you ALSO have an orgying horde of naked vomiting nuns you are distracting us all from. People who have seen this film dozens of times over the years (as have I) but who were not lucky enough to see the "previous" director's cut in some form or other have come to see the film FOR the naked orgying vomiting nuns. And the charred thighbone masturbation (note: if you haven't seen THAT scene, it is much tenderer than it sounds).
Addendum: there are suggestions over on the Criterion Forum, where the bread-breaking is mentioned, that the repetition of shots happens because Russell and Bradsell had to hurriedly splice material into an existing cut of the film, and elected to live with continuity errors, rather than rebuilding the whole scene; there seems also an implication (or so the AI seemed to indicate) that these errors are repeated in "homage" to the earlier film (this seems like a potential computer misparaphrase) Forgive me for not double-checking the 2002 (bootleg) DVD version as well, but I assure you, the whole R@pe of Christ plays out without these repeated shots on said Spanish blu ray; it has none of the clunkiness in those scenes, is perfectly edited, and is what you really kinda should have used.
We can only hope that these errors are addressed before any physical media release!
(...and by the way, the French DVD of Love Streams includes the nudity. There may be some inherent hypocrisy in what I've written here but whatever, the repeated shots are clumsy and shouldn't be in there, whoever's will they allegedly manifest or whichever circumstances they duplicate or...).
#nobody-cares_but_the_writer
See this film if you haven't, it's magnificent and this is one really SMALL but ANNOYED quibble, but, like, I am ready for the final cut here. The restoration looks great otherwise, sorry, guys. (But c'mon, get it right).
