Ken Russell’s cult-classic “The Devils,” which comes to the Somerville Theater this week for a limited re-release, remains a glorious cinematic affront: one part historical drama, one part political horror flick where the monsters wear vestments and call their cruelty salvation. Its graphic sex and scenes of torture earned it an X rating when it was released (it’s now NC-17, which didn’t exist in 1971) as well as the condemnation of the Vatican.
At the time of its initial release, critic Roger Ebert bashed the film for its graphic excess. Fellow critic Judith Crist judged it a “grand fiesta for sadists and perverts.” Through the lens of the now, I’d call it a riveting, lurid spectacle that contains hard truths. It’s a must-see for cinephiles, with its masterful cinematic composition and status as probably Russell’s magnum opus — in a career that spawned the sensual wrestling match “Women in Love” (1969), the psychedelic rock opera “Tommy” (1975) and the bodily transformations of “Altered States” (1980, shot in Beacon Hill). “The Devils” brings his gifts into their fiercest alignment: theatrical excess, sexual frankness and a deeply felt anger at the abuse of power.
Set in 17th-century Loudun, France, “The Devils” centers on Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed, who regularly collaborated with Russell), a priest whose appetites and independence make him a convenient target for an alliance of church and state. Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave), the convent’s sexually tormented mother superior, fixates on him and subsequent accusations of demonic possession provide the machinery for his destruction. The film draws from Aldous Huxley’s “The Devils of Loudun” and John Whiting’s play adaptation. Russell’s jumping-off delivers a savage account of private desire repackaged as public emergency.
As Grandier, Reed is magnificent. His entitled priest has the swagger of a man accustomed to getting away with things (it’s hard not to see seeds of the Catholic Church scandal that so rocked Boston not so long ago). But there’s intelligence beneath the appetite and, eventually, conviction beneath the vanity. As a compromised man, Grandier acquires moral stature without having his contradictions scrubbed away. Redgrave is equally fearless, making Jeanne’s longing, humiliation and vindictiveness inseparable. Together, they give the film a human wound beneath its extravagant surface. The cast also includes Twiggy and Michael Gothard as a punk-rock Father Barr, a fanatical priest and ideological enemy of Grandier who is out to exorcise what possesses the nuns into orgiastic writhing.
“The Devils” plays out across an impressive canvas. Derek Jarman’s production design turns Loudun into a white, angular enclosure, at once fortress, convent and clinic. Russell fills it with grotesque ceremony, erotic fantasy and vicious comedy. The exorcisms have the energy of a rigged carnival: performative authority that spectators rapaciously consume, and suffering that’s presented as entertainment. Hysteria is manufactured and stoked, accusation becomes proof, and proof becomes permission to torture.
The film’s suppression is part of its legend. Warner Bros. and British censors demanded cuts in 1971; American audiences received a still shorter version. Edited copies circulated, but the studio resisted making the recovered footage widely available for decades. It was a film about institutional repression that was itself subjected to prolonged institutional control.
The rerelease restores more than image quality. This 4K restoration was painstakingly assembled by Russell in 2004 from the original camera negative, with restored sound. It reinstates censored material, including the notorious “Rape of Christ” sequence involving nuns and a religious statue, and Jeanne’s disturbing encounter with Grandier’s charred femur (yes, you read that right). These passages deepen the film’s fusion of repression, sacrilege and political manipulation.
Russell was a fierce defender of the movie. During a 1971 BBC interview/confrontation, he hit critic Alexander Walker over the head with a rolled-up copy of Walker’s hostile review of the movie, claiming it described events that weren’t in the film.
For all its reputation as an outrage machine (it would make potent triple bill with Fellini’s “Satyricon”(1969) and Pasolini’s “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” (1975)), “The Devils” is also a tragedy of conscience and morality. Its enduring force comes from the distance between faith, norms and the institutions wielding them. Russell makes that distance terrifying, absurd and ultimately heartbreaking. Fifty-five years later, the film still burns.
A stronger
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