The Ele­phant Man is return­ing to cin­e­mas in a new 4K restoration

It’s been a big week for David Lynch fans. On Mon­day, Net­flix added the exper­i­men­tal filmmaker’s short WHAT DID JACK DO? to their plat­form, and now Stu­dio­Canal has unveiled the trail­er for their new restora­tion of his land­mark 1980 dra­ma The Ele­phant Man.

The true(ish) account of Joseph Mer­rick, a gen­tle-heart­ed man with a severe phys­i­cal defor­mi­ty that made him a pari­ah in so-called polite soci­ety, launched Lynch from the avant-garde fringes into the main­stream. The film net­ted eight Oscar nom­i­na­tions and the biggest box-office return of Lynch’s career, lead­ing to an offer to direct the next Star Wars pic­ture and ulti­mate­ly a deal to helm his mas­sive­ly cat­a­stroph­ic adap­ta­tion of Dune.

But while it may have con­nect­ed with a wider swath of audi­ences, The Ele­phant Man by no means rep­re­sents a con­ces­sion on the director’s inim­itable style. There’s not the slight­est whiff of com­pro­mise in his stark black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy, the themes of alien­ation and bod­i­ly break­down – beau­ti­ful­ly realised by John Hurt in a career-best per­for­mance – or the ambi­ent creep­ing hor­ror that are all Lynchi­an stock-in-trade.

Stu­dio­canal has giv­en the film a spiffy 4K restora­tion and sched­uled a the­atri­cal run for the spring, though a spe­cif­ic date has yet to be set, with plans for a home-video release undoubt­ed­ly com­ing down the pike. As is the case with all of Lynch’s films, it real­ly sings in the the­ater, where a view­er can savor every creak and pop and hiss of the metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed sound design.

As one of the com­par­a­tive­ly less-weird entries in Lynch’s canon, it’s accord­ing­ly one of the least-dis­cussed, but that shouldn’t detract from the bril­liance on dis­play. For a brief, glo­ri­ous moment, Hol­ly­wood was Lynch’s oys­ter, and instead of cozy­ing up clos­er to the indus­try types, he spent that cachet mak­ing mul­ti­plex­es a stranger, more for­eign place to be.

The Ele­phant Man 40^th anniver­sary 4K restora­tion is released in cin­e­mas on 13 March, and on dig­i­tal, DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD Collector’s Edi­tion on 6 April.