The Devils (1971)

My opinion of Ken Russell was, like many people, prejudiced before viewing by the many negative reports about his films. Every establishment film critic I read in the 1980s described him as exaggerated, unrealistic, sex-obsessed and vulgar. As a young man I felt these comments to be confirmed when I saw The Music Lovers, which (compared to Amadeus) seemed in my opinion to lack the requisite respectful period drama feel of a composer's biopic (little did I know that Russell had pioneered the composer biopic). However, The Devils blew me away both before and after reading Huxley's excellent history book on which it was based. It is a stunning and vivid recreation of a repressive period in France's religious history which has universal symbolic overtones, and the lack of realism (if it exists) could easily be the critic or viewer's inability to understand another age of history in the way a dedicated filmmaker can. It is a triumph of integrity, scriptwriting, acting, directing, design (by Derek Jarman, no less) and cerebral and visceral entertainment.

Fmovies: I love love love love love this movie. Ken Russell (along with Greg Araki) is probably my favorite director of all time. He is an absolute showboat! The Wagner of film. Russell never met a line he couldn't bend into a circle and a light bulb he didn't explode into a star burst supernova. Where most directors are ascetic, Russell is a glutton. Where many whisper their convictions with hushed words, Russell screams through a megaphone. This I adore about him.

And "The Devils" is (drum roll please) his masterpiece! Yes, this film is savage. It is shocking. It is perverse and violent and all of that. But it is also one of the greatest films ever made. Very similar to "The Crucible" (and if you haven't read that, stop what you're doing and read it instead of this).

A priest (brilliantly played by Oliver Reed) in rennaisance era France is caught in a political squeeze play and becomes the subject of a (literal) witch hunt. He is put on trial for being a demon and a group of nuns are bullied by a crazy exorcist into claiming themselves possessed. The whole thing plays out with the maximum amount of grotesque-ness imaginable. Even if one is used to Russell's films what is shown here could prove unwatchable for some.

We get: nuns ripping their clothes off and running around naked (pretending to be possessed), people burned at the stake, forced vomiting, nuns copulating with Jesus (just a hallucination though), physical torture of many different varieties. It's very in your face. However, the subject is topical (obviously) and it really deserves to be seen by more people.

Another great reason to see this movie is Vanessa Redgrave, who plays a hunchbacked mother superior. A very conflicted character attracted to Oliver Reed. I've never liked Vanessa Redgrave much, but she is magnificent in this movie. And her performance is one of the creepiest I have ever seen, rivalling Paul Smith's sweating smiling sinister jail-guard in "Midnight Express".

However, my selfish view remains: I hope this movie never ever gets released on DVD that way it will stay unknown and I (and the rest of the smart people on earth) will get to enjoy it as our treasure and ours alone. It will not spread to the masses and be diluted and trod upon and destroyed. This film is art. It is not junk put out by your local movie studio. This is a film of passion and meaning and sweat and blood. If you are reading this and you have no idea what I am talking about: stop reading and go away and never watch this film. Ever! You will merely dilute it with your stupid, reality-TV watching fingers.

Thank you.

Also, some of Ken Russell's other great beautiful films include: Savage Messiah, Altered States, The Music Lovers, Women in Love, and Mahler.

This film never got the credit it deserved. It's both a savage socio-political critique in the vein of Millers "The Crucible" and a crazed excerise in Grand Guignol. Only Russell could have pulled this one out. Also features Oliver Reed in one his greatest roles. Father Grandier was Reeds Maximus.

The Devils fmovies. Well the philosophical statements and commentary embedded into this film are far too numerous to evaluate. It's every line of dialog and every character. The overall moral of the story seemed to me that 'If a leader truly departs from the structure of power and refuses to submit to the boot of governance, and then starts to have real power and a following of their own, they will be utterly destroyed.', but there are many other equally ominous themes to choose from. I wish I could say I haven't watched stories which seemed hauntingly similar to Loudon's played out on the news many times.

But beyond the 'moral' as I see it, is the truly very creepy feel to the whole film. The scene in which an entire convent of naked nuns are being exorcised by an inquisitor of the 'demons' that are forcing them into a wild orgy of sex, is genuinely memorable as one of film's most surreal scenes. Amazingly, these events happen in a quite understandable sequence for logical (if nightmarish) reasons under Russell's direction. These people really seemed from a whole different world, as if they weren't human but they obviously were all-too human, and the sudden realization that this might actually be closer to the heritage of my own culture than what I was taught REALLY creeped me out. A very effective device. Almost made me ill to imagine it. A very powerful film, one of my picks for an all time best film.

When reading the following review, please keep in mind that I saw this film in slightly unorthodox circumstances. Without meaning to sound smug, the screening I attended took place at my University, was chaired by Ken Russell and was of a restored version of The Devils. The missing footage found by the critic Mark Kermode had been spliced back in and the film restored to the director's vision as close as possible. Given that I've never seen the original edit released to cinemas back in the 1970s and that this was only the second time this version had been screened, I think its fair to estimate that the film I'm reviewing will be significantly different to the one that is widely available so please keep that in mind.

Anyway...starting with a bizarre sequence involving an androgynous, foppish King prancing around a theatre stage done up like an Egyptian Queen, Ken Russell's The Devils is a film that over the course of its subsequent hour and forty minutes is liable to offend as many people as it will entertain. The extravagance of the Royal French Court filled with laughing nobles and brown nosing politicians resplendent in the very finest dark ages fashion is soon juxtaposed when the film turns a stark gaze on a rotting countryside filled with pestilence and disease. Maggot infested corpses line the road and the attention is quickly turned on the town of Loudun, where Priest Father Grandier battles not only the plague, but the political schemers who want to demolish the walls. Grandier is such a charismatic public figure however that the politicians are powerless, until they elaborate a plan to have him tarnished with accusations of blasphemy.

Central to this conspiracy is a chapter of Nuns living near by, of whom the hunched Sister Jeanne proves instrumental. Scared of her own sexual desires, the woman is driven mad by her very human nature and soon, the inquisition are knocking on her door and every woman in the building is being tortured and brain washed in the name of Christianity. The evils of religious fanaticism are plain to see, with Michael Gothard's scene stealing extremist Father Barre being the most disgusting example of a Priest you are ever likely to see on film. He batters and humiliates women for the sake of getting his own way and is so inflexible that he will send people to their deaths rather than admit his own fallibility. Controversial scenes abound as Barre's determination brings about nothing but misery, with the brainwashed nuns stripping off and indulging in a mass orgy, culminating in perhaps the most offensive scene when a statue of Christ is pulled down from the chapel walls and used by the nuns as a sexual play thing.

While it may depict blasphemy though, the film itself is not blasphemous and believe it or not, actually celebrates Christianity. It does so through the figure of Grandier (Oliver Reed at his very best), a man whose faith in God is so strong that he will not allow the misled elders of the Church deviate him from his path. He isn't a perfect man and has a weakness for the fairer sex, but he will not bow down to pressure or allow physical pain to weaken his love of God, he is a fine depiction of a Priest of which the Church can be proud.

However, religious sermonising isn't the chief attraction because let's face it, the reason most of us would want to see this movie is because it's controversial. With the aforementioned cavorting on the cross and nun orgies it's not hard to see why and the Inquisition don't exac

I can never understand why "The Devils", which was such a major film and caused such controversy, never became a cult classic being shown every other week on cable TV. This film totally annihilates all the trashy "straight-to-video" horror films. Based on true events in 17th century France, this film is one of the most horrifying tales of man's intolerance: religious and sexual.

The tale begins with an outbreak of the plague, which the folk of the middle ages, with typical misunderstanding of the real cause, rat fleas, believed that someone was to blame. Who more convenient a scapegoat than Father Grandier, played by the notorious Oliver Reed an actor who ended his rambunctious life by dropping dead in a bar. The sexual appeal of Fr. Grandier drives the supposedly celibate clergy into a frenzy of jealousy. A group of nuns, led by a noblewoman who has been forced into the convent due to her physical deformity and therefore, lack of marriageable options, joins in the hysteria which is not satisfied until Fr. Grandier is burned at the stake.

Although set in France in the middle ages, a lot of the hysteria can be seen today, in our more enlightened times. Just witness the periodic witch hunts in the United States, such as the furore over the alleged Satanic cults running day care centers, not to mention the reds under the beds hysteria of the 50's.

This was one of Ken Russell's most controversial films, and definitely very 70's in its style, after all, we had Mick Jagger and Twiggy perfectly cast as decadent French nobility, and it has taken 20+ years to see how right on the mark he was.

Although Russell was the hottest thing in cinema for a while, he faded like a discarded fashion as every wannabe copied his style, but without being able to understand what is was that set Ken Russell apart. Unfortunately Russell did not help his reputation by becoming more and more the icon of bad taste. Eventually he became a parody and the fickle who had formally worshipped his genius could not disassociate themselves quickly enough.

Like Orson Welles, Ken Russell's brilliance will not be realized until a new generation discovers his work. I recommend "The Devils" along with "The Music Lovers" as his best work.