RESURRECTION DAY?, by Chris Derrick? – Sympathy for the Devil #4?

December 22, 2011 Chris Derrick 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago provocative filmmaker Ken Russell (ALTERED STATES, TOMMY, THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM ) passed away, and in all the obits his controversial and shredded film THE DEVILS (1971) naturally was discussed. THE DEVILS is one of those late 60s/early 70s films that pushed the envelop too far in how it depicted female sexuality on screen, extremely fervent Catholicism (the movie is about a possession, an exorcism and its aftermath) mixed with mordant and sordid sex scenes tinged with brutal violence that pre-Enlightenment Europeans administer so well, and consequently the film was severely hacked prior to its UK and then international release.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the restoration movement became to take shape and come alive with gusto, notably with David Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, Stanley Kubrick’s SPARTACUS, and Hitchcock’s VERTIGO. In 1990s, when laser discs were still a relevant and viable video technology for exploring the release of “alternative cuts” or director’s cuts of films (mainly through the still-amazing and comprehensive Criterion Collection) there seemed to be a rising movement, of sorts, to see butchered films reconstructed and released on home video according to the filmmaker’s original vision… like Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBELEV. Some of the material that the Criterion Collection and Janus Films combed through to put together “complete” versions of film is pretty amazing.

When DVDs became the home video format of choice (for the studios that represented cash cows), restorations became more possible because there was a strong possibility of profitability in doing this work. Restored films on DVD that piqued the interest of film fans and filmmakers include Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL (expertly reconstructed based upon a memo that Welles wrote instructing how he saw the film) and Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL. However, there were a handful films that many cinefiles yearned to see restored; THE DEVILS is one of those films.

The short theatrical run and then DVD release of so many classic and cult films elevate the process of restoration and re-mastering a business model, not just an exercise in hubris and academia. As witnessed by the restored version of Elia Kazan’s A STREETCAR NAME DESIRE.

One of the interesting bits of resurrected cinema that fits my criteria of a resurrection of a maligned film is Donald Cammel’s WILD SIDE, starring a little-known-at-the-time Anne Heche (in one of her most smoldering, smart and erotic roles) and voluble, black-haired manic Christopher Walken.

You probably haven’t head of Donald Cammel (maybe you’ve seen his excellent first feature PERFORMANCE starring Mick Jagger) or about the ill-fated production of WILD SIDE and the subsequent butchering executed by the production entity; this — along with other demons brought on by excess decadence — were too much for Cammel to handle, and he committed suicide.

Years later, the films editor, Frank Mazzola, was able to cobble together some financing and working from the original script, editorial notes, memory and maybe a retained workprint resuscitated Cammel’s original vision, and the film was released on DVD. The DVD director’s cut of WILD SIDE is an impressive film, very quirky and disturbing, but fascinating nonetheless. And it carries a seldom heard and entertaining score by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Cammel’s cinematic vision was vindicated… but he wasn’t around to be re-appreciated.

There is a demand for a similar Lazarus-esque miracle for Russell’s THE DEVILS. It’s seems like just the kind of undertaking that Martin Scorsese would get behind; he always stands up and shouts when Pier Passolini’s SALO is attacked or when bans are demanded for that film. Although, everyone could argue that there are some other more deserving film for the 60s/70s or early 80s that would be first in line for such an task. For a long time, I wanted to see if Francis Ford Coppola would revisit APOCALYPSE NOW! and then he did; the Redux is more than just a curio, too, it expands the hallucinatory vision of that extraordinary film. So you will always have to ask, “what would the film be if these artists could release the vision they got on celluloid?”

And there have been rumors that William Friedkin was preparing a director’s cut of his gay underworld serial killer moving CRUISIN’ (starring Al Pacino), but it hasn’t come to pass; which is surprising since Friedkin achieved swan-song success with the reconstructed version of THE EXORCIST (another religious themed movie with unusual depictions of possession… many of which we culled from THE DEVILS).

Most cinefiles and film historians would probably want to see a restored version of Welles’ THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, yet the story goes that all the original negatives where destroyed to spite Welles (or some other petty personal reason) after the film was re-cut in his absence to make it “more commercial”; rumors persist to this day that original, unseen material from that film still exists in a Paramount vault somewhere, but who has the authority or time & money to got on that treasure hunt?

Yet THE DEVILS is/was a controversial film that the Catholic Church spoke out against and caused the British censors outrage (thus demanding cuts), and that in it self warrants an expedition into a film archive. While there have been so-called “restored” version released, there has not been a comprehensive reconstruction and re-mastering with the whiz-bang digital imaging technology available to do the film justice.

Recently, it is once again rumored that the British Film Institute is finally going to issue a supposed restored version of THE DEVILS some time next year, but sadly Russell is no longer with us to be properly vindicated (if this release does happen, and isn’t just a Region 2 DVD release; as Evangelical groups in this country would protest against its theatrical distribution) on both sides of the Atlantic.

What butchered films would you like to see finally get reconstructed and re-released?

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