A Film Banned in 1971 Can Finally Be Seen Uncut

The phone rang, and movie critic Mark Kermode picked up. On the line was Tim Everett, an archivist at Warner UK. Everett told him what he was holding, in Kermode's retelling: "I'm holding a reel of film, and it's got on it a bunch of nuns and a really big crucifix."

Kermode called Ken Russell, the director, to tell him, "Ken, we found the missing sequence."

Russell had told Kermode when they met in 1995 that the cut most people had seen was, in his words, "damaged goods." The historical drama follows a 17th century French town and its priest, Father Grandier, played by Oliver Reed. Kermode, who had long admired Russell's films and helped put together the restoration, said Russell called it a political film about the politicization of religious hysteria.

When the movie opened in 1971, officials judged much of it too vulgar for audiences. Local councils and authorities across Britain banned it. For decades, it survived in incomplete form.

So a new 4K restoration is back in British cinemas. After about five decades, moviegoers can see the complete movie, including the long lost sequence Everett found after Kermode described to him what Russell was looking for.

Vicky Russell, Russell's daughter, who was eight while her father made the movie, said her father compared himself to Vincent van Gogh. "They don't understand him, but they'll understand when I'm gone," she said he told her. Russell died in 2011. She said, "We can't believe we're overwhelmed by this snowball of popularity and love for the film."

She expects the uncut version will still divide people. "Some will be shocked. Some will think it's blasphemous," she said. "But the people that can see the bigger picture can see that this is what's happening still."