Ken Russell

Ken Russell’s The Devils definitive 4K restoration to launch ahead of major BFI retrospective

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Censored for over half a century, Ken Russell’s visionary masterpiece The Devils will be back on the big screen in its definitive version on 30 October 2026, released in cinemas in the UK and Ireland by BFI Distribution in partnership with Warner Bros. Clockwork. Fully restored in 4K and cut to Ken Russell’s specific direction, Ken Russell’s The Devils is the first publicly released version of the film as intended by the filmmaker. Fifty-five years after its initial release, the definitive version of The Devils was unveiled at the 79th Cannes Film Festival as an official selection in Cannes Classics. Warner Bros. Clockwork will be releasing the film in all other territories, beginning with the US on 16 October for an exclusive one-week engagement.

An enduring masterpiece of cinema starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, Ken Russell’s The Devils is a prescient epic of obsession and corruption, and a defining work of art from seminal filmmaker Ken Russell. Inspired by the true story of 17th-century priest Urbain Grandier, accused of bewitching a convent of nuns, the film lays bare the collusion of church and state through a searing vision of religious persecution, collective hysteria and institutional corruption. In addition to powerhouse performances from Reed and Redgrave, Ken Russell’s The Devils showcases the stunning work of artists at the peak of their craft: Academy Award-winning cinematographer David Watkin (Out of Africa, Chariots of Fire); editor Michael Bradsell (Local Hero, Jabberwocky); and visual artist Derek Jarman (Jubilee, Caravaggio), whose work as production designer marked his feature film debut.

Produced by Warner Bros. in 1971, the film received best director awards from two of the most prestigious institutions in the world: the 33rd Venice International Film Festival and the US National Board of Review. Its critical reception in the following decades has only become more impassioned, championed by artists and film historians including Guillermo del Toro and Mark Kermode.

Stuart Brown, BFI Director of Programme and Distribution said:

“Ken Russell’s The Devils is one of the great masterpieces of British cinema: a film of astonishing imagination, searing power and dazzling formal brilliance. The BFI is thrilled to be partnering with Warner Bros. Clockwork to present the new restoration, which reveals anew the extraordinary artistry of Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jarman and the many others who collaborated to create a truly singular work. The BFI has long supported Ken Russell’s film and television work across BFI Southbank, BFI home entertainment and BFI Player, and so it is a fitting privilege to help bring this landmark restoration to audiences across the UK and Ireland.”

Ken Russell was a pioneering Academy Award-nominated British filmmaker, the disruptive visionary behind classics such as Tommy, Women in Love and Altered States. He directed an Academy Award-winning performance from Glenda Jackson in Women in Love.

To mark the centenary of Ken Russell’s birth on 3 July 1927, in July and August 2027 BFI Southbank will present the most extensive retrospective ever mounted of one of Britain’s truly pioneering figures. Spanning more than five decades of restless creativity, the season will explore Russell’s extraordinary work, from his amateur films of the 1950s through the form-breaking BBC productions of the 1960s that transformed the possibilities of television arts broadcasting, before he embarked on one of the most distinctive careers in world cinema. The BFI celebration will bring together every one of Russell’s theatrically released feature films, alongside rare television works – many screening from original film prints preserved in the BFI National Archive’s collections – later digital productions and newly created materials by the BFI National Archive.

Ken Russell’s The Devils is the definitive cut of The Devils, and no other director’s cut formally exists. This cut was originally reconstructed in 2004 under the supervision of Ken Russell and the film’s editor Michael Bradsell, in collaboration with Mark Kermode and Paul Joyce. The 4K restoration was completed using the original camera negative at WB Water Tower Color, with audio restoration completed using original composite 35mm magnetic film at WB Sound. Warner Bros. Clockwork’s release of Ken Russell’s The Devils marks the first time Russell’s defining masterpiece has been made officially accessible to the public.

Ken Russell’s The Devils will be released in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on 30 October 2026.

Ken Russell’s Brilliant Photos of Teddy Girls from 1955

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Jean Rayner – “A fourteen year old, with her jeans and old jacket, still in the probationary stage of Teddyism. Later, she may smarten up to senior standards.” Picture Post, June 1955. “She had attitude by the truckload”, remembered Ken Russell. “No one paid much attention to the teddy girls before I did them, though there was plenty on teddy boys. They were tough, these kids, they’d been born in the war years and food rationing only ended in about 1954 – a year before I took these pictures. They were proud. They knew their worth. They just wore what they wore.” ©2006 TopFoto/Ken Russell.

“Teddy Clothes”, began a Picture Post article in June 1955, and illustrated by the 27 year old photographer Ken Russell, “can cover a multitude of sins – or juvenile delinquencies…”. However this wasn’t just another moral panic article about the hooligans and juvenile gangsters known as the Teddy Boys – a term first noticed in the British press only eighteen months previously. This time Picture Post were concentrating on the female angle and described Teddy Girls as “hard-working with a fashion sense which has brought a welcome flash of mass-elegance onto the British scene.”

The first mention of Teddy Girls in the press, and almost exactly a year before the Picture Post article, was in the Daily Express in June 1954. They were reporting, with a heavy emphasis on her appearance and her clothes, about a girl who had recently been arrested in Southsea: “She was auburn-haired and fifteen. She wore tight-fitting trousers, a sweater, and brightly coloured socks. And she carried a small dagger.” The Express continued, “she appeared at Portsmouth Children’s Court yesterday wearing a “split” skirt, a diaphanous blouse, and high heeled sandals. The policeman said she was in a fight at Southsea with other girls. It began when two girls called her a “Teddy Girl”.”

Iris Thornton “When I was 13 I started going to the Mayflower youth club every day after school. You could take classes in deportment and cookery, there was a hairdressers and sports activities to get involved in. One day, 2 years later, Ken Russell came and asked if there were any Teddy girls there to photograph. There weren’t many Teds in my area, just a few of us so we turned heads. You would walk past people on the street and hear them saying ‘Oh god, look at what they are wearing!’ Which made me chuckle. The photos were taken where I lived in Canning Town, this area was called the Docklands Settlement. I lived at home with my parents and older sister and brother, it was a prosperous working class area because of the docks on the River Thames. In 1955 I left school and went to work with my sister in a factory. At the time I was happy to leave, thought it was marvellous. But then after a little while I wished I has still been in school, work was so boring.” From an interview with Iris by Eve Dawoud. ©2006 TopFoto/Ken Russell

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Documentary: “In Search of English Folk Song”

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Famed filmmaker Ken Russell tours the countryside in search of the roots of the English folk song in this eye-opening documentary. His travels reveal the history of the form, its remnants in modern music and the ways it evolved as it was carried to Ireland and the New World. Performances and interviews with Donovan, Fairport Convention, June Tabor and other artists help illustrate the changing face of English folk music through the centuries.