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Screening at Cannes: Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’

Censored and even banned upon its release in 1971, the X-rated period film screened uncut for an audience that included Peter Jackson, fresh from receiving an honorary Palme d'Or.

“Satan is ever ready to seduce us with sensual delights—ahahahahaha!” sneers a horny nun in one of cinema’s most infamous antireligious screeds. In a muted first week at the Cannes Film Festival, where Hollywood opted not to premiere any big movies and the initial competition selections ranged from austere to demure, the hottest ticket on the Croisette was for a blasphemous film that first played theaters 55 years ago. And its arresting images of hysterical, orgiastic nuns watching as power-drunk priests sadistically interrogate their victims with torture-chamber glee are just as potent as ever. Get ready for torture-chamber tongue piercing, ankle hobbling and a burnt human femur used as a dildo.

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The Devils, British filmmaker Ken Russell’s full-throated condemnation of rampant church-and-state corruption so brazenly risqué that its X-rated initial release was banned in some countries and........

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