Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave deliver career-defining performances in this film, initially banned for indecency, which underscores the brutality inherent in power structures.
"I could never be Satan's boy. I haven't the humility." These words are spoken by Father Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century French cleric accused of sorcery, portrayed with flair by Oliver Reed in Ken Russell's caustic 1971 masterpiece; it has now been fully restored and re-released in its uncut version following years of suppression. It hails from an era when movies, screening in mainstream theaters, still had the capacity to provoke, to inject that provocation into the polite cultural landscape, and to stimulate earnest debate over whether such shock—or, alternatively, a prohibition—was warranted.
The Devils is grounded in a real episode of politically orchestrated mass hysteria, adapted by Russell from two literary sources: Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting's stage play The Devils. Of course, it is obscene; obscenity is the glowing sulfurous pigment Russell uses to coat the canvas. It concerns obscenity—yet the obscenity does not lie in the sexualized depictions of the crucified Christ or cavorting naked nuns; rather, it is the violence of authority that is portrayed as obscene. The notion of martyrs or heretics being burned at the stake has long been an accepted fact, recounted in U-rated history lessons, a punishment that persisted well into the European Enlightenment. Russell shows you what it might actually look like, and that involves a confrontational assault on propriety. Continue reading...
