The Devils - lost footage found

[Jeff Wilson]

Ken Russell's THE DEVILS made it to screens in 1970 with some key sequences cut; that footage was finally located by researcher Mark Kermode, and the footage is scheduled to be screened for the first time in a Channel 4 (UK) documentary later this month. The linked article by Kermode tells the tale, and it's quite fascinating. Hopefully the restored version of the film will be released at some point.

The Devils

[Welles Fan]

I'd like to see it restored. I think it was rated 'X' when originally released. I remember seeing it on video and finding it to be depressing, but not particularly shocking. There were good performances by Oliver Reed and others and a stunning one by Vanessa Redgrave, but it was not a movie I cared to watch more than a time or two. I hope the new footage manages to make the rounds.

...Now if only the Russell film about the lake poets (Clouds of Glory) would be released...

[jaime marzol]

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I saw The Devils first run on a huge screen, i was a little kid. I got in to see it because my uncle owned the theater and i used to have a summer job there. it was bleak, strange looking, and did not have glenda jackson's incredible breasts, that had made 'Women In Love' such a huge hit for me.

but The Devils had something going, i have not seen it since 1970, and still remember parts of it.

[Harvey Chartrand]

I saw The Devils 31 years ago (twice in the same week). Today, I could never sit through such a film.
I vividly recall the torture scenes, especially that awful moment when Oliver Reed, whose legs have just been pulverized by hammer blows, realizes, as he is being tied to the stake, that his neck won't be snapped just before he is set aflame (mercy-killing was the executioneer's prerogative back then, apparently). Then we see the hideously burn-blistered priest shrieking in the conflagration. The devil you say, if this was the edited American version that made it to Canadian theatres, then I can't imagine what the uncut European version must have been like. All I know is — I don't want to see it!
Ken Russell (now 75) is doing nothing but junk nowadays, though one has high hopes for his next project — Charged: The Life of Nikola Tesla (alternate title: Tesla and Katharine) — the first film on the super-genius inventor since The Secret of Nikola Tesla (1979), in which Welles had a cameo as tycoon J.P. Morgan.
Another obligatory Welles reference: Aldous Huxley, author of The Devils of Loudun, co-wrote the screenplay for the 1943 Jane Eyre.

[jaime marzol]

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i liked russell's film with anthony perkins as the rush-sniffing priest. the worm of the white lair, or something like that, was too strange and didn't hold me rivited to the screen.

[Welles Fan]

I admire parts of many of Russell's movies, but over-all, I think he is just a hack with flashes of genius. I liked the sequence in The Music Lovers when Tchaikovsky is playing the first Piano Concerto, and Russell shows the perceptions/fantasies/mental images of different people in the audience in response to the music (Tchaikovsky’s sister, his future wife, and his future patroness) . Also, the nightmarish train ride on his wedding night with the Pathetique symphony in the background is well done. But he blows it by adding the sequence of Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest gleefully blowing off the heads of Tchaikovsky’s enemies/antagonists with a cannon in time to the cannon shots of the 1812 Overture. And the final scene of the insane ex-wife (Glenda Jackson-brilliant, BTW) is as horrific as anything from The Devils.

In Mahler, he depicts the composer as converting from Judaism to Catholicism in order to gain the top spot at the Vienna State Opera , which was under the control of the anti-semitic Cosima (widow of Richard) Wagner. This much is true (though the real-life Mahler’s motives may be debated), but Russell then felt compelled to add a ridiculous nightmare sequence in which goose-stepping Nazis (from the future, I guess) torment poor Mahler. Ironically, when I first saw Mahler, it was “edited for television”, and the Nazi sequence was left out. I thought it was a pretty good movie (and I’m a Mahlerite, too) that way. I later saw the uncut version. All I could do was hang my head and say “alas”.

I guess Russell has a sort of impish sense of humour that he finds hard to control. He probably thinks the Nazi stuff is funny in a “Springtime for Hitler” sort of way, and he probably found humor in the 1812 sequence of The Music Lovers. The scene where the doctors examine the stomach contents of a torture victim in The Devils, and the scene where John Woodvine holds up Oliver Reed’s infant progeny before the now-smoking Reed at the stake, while shouting “there, bastard! Watch your father burn! Ha ha ha!” struck Russell as funny in his impish way. I just found it repellant.I guess the only unqualified success from Russell (IMO) is Women in Love, because he (for the most part) behaved himself. The prequel he made later (The Rainbow) is pretty good, too. Lair of the White Worm is campy fun, but Gothic and Salome’s Last Dance are campy messes, IMO. I also enjoyed his film on the lake poets (Clouds of Glory) made for British TV.

Still, I’d probably like to give the uncut Devils at least one more look for Redgrave’s performance as the hunchbacked nun.

[mteal]

Welles Fan,
I'm a longtime Mahlerite too, and I think the situation with Welles' unfinished films is similar to the situation of Mahler's 10th symphony, now available in four different performing editions by four different Mahler enthusiasts. That's why I'd like to see more then one crack taken at completing each of the Welles films (It would be especially disappointing to see Jess Franco's cut of DON QUIXOTE be the last word on the subject).

Anyway, being a lifelong classical music buff is one of the things that attracted me to Orson Welles, probably the most symphonic of all filmmakers. That's also why I appreciate Ken Russell's attempts to tell the stories of famous composers like Mahler, even if his films do go off the deep end at times. It's not a very commercial subject which, I suppose, is why Russell felt he needed to spice things up. Boy did he ever: Glenda Jackson getting gang-groped in the asylum in THE MUSIC LOVERS and MAHLER's 'conversion' scene are two of the most spectacularly tasteless things I've ever seen in a movie.

Harvey,
For some reason, when you mentioned Aldous Huxley as the author of THE DEVILS OF LOUDUN and as one of the screenwriters for JANE EYRE (along with Welles and Houseman) I was reminded first of Huxley's DOORS OF PERCEPTION and then of MORRISON & ORSON WELLES, a wierd but entertaining little piece at the now-pretty-much-defunct Welles ng at
http://www.deja.com
Jim Morrison, of course, took his band's name from Huxley's book and was reportedly an admirer of Welles too. The character of John Dale in THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND certainly bears a strong resemblance to Jim Morrison, and it would be interesting if the two ever really had met.

Welles also said that he and Huxley were chums, and spent many hours debating the pros and cons of using hallucinogenic drugs to explore the mind (which makes me wonder if Welles ever saw Russell's ALTERED STATES, in which William Hurt makes his first appearance with The Doors' LIGHT MY FIRE on the soundtrack). In CITIZEN WELLES, Frank Brady strongly suggests that Huxley's roman-a-clef novel about Hearst, AFTER MANY A SUMMER DIES THE SWAN, was one of the inspirations for CITIZEN KANE, so that may have been the source of their friendship.

The only Huxley novel I've ever read is BRAVE NEW WORLD, but I'd like to eventually get to both "Swan" and "Devils". It's also been a long time since I've seen Russell's film of THE DEVILS, and I'm looking forward to seeing the complete version although yes, it's pretty gruesome stuff.

Russell's project about Nicholas Tesla also sounds interesting. The earlier Tesla film with Welles also stars Oja Kodar as the love interest, wearing a brown wig that makes her look like Kathy Lee Gifford (Remember her? She used to be a star). Welles, as J.P. Morgan, sounds like he's reading cue cards, and does half of his part while lying in bed. Maybe that was one of his contract stipulations.

[jaime marzol]

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i especially like the idea of several filmmakers having a crack at putting together an unfinished film when the original director has passed away. look how many translations we have of kafka, cervante, plato, sartre, and every other great writer, why not films? you read the preface, then you pick the interpretation that suits your taste.

a tasteless scene of glenda jackson getting groped? sounds utterly fascinating! THE MUSIC LOVER? will have to check that out. any other tasteless scenes with glenda jackson i need to check out?