The Devils (film)

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The Devils
Directed by Ken Russell
Produced by Ken Russell
Robert H. Solo
Written by Ken Russell
Aldous Huxley (book)
John Whiting(play)
Starring Oliver Reed
Vanessa Redgrave
Dudley Sutton
John Woodvine
Gemma Jones
Music by Peter Maxwell Davies
Distributed by Warner Brothers
Release date(s) 16 July 1971 (U.S.)
Running time 111 min.
Country United Kingdom
Language English
IMDb profile
For the 2002 musical project, see The Devils (band).

The Devils is a 1971 film directed by Ken Russell and starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave. It is based on the book The Devils of Loudun (1952) by Aldous Huxley, and the play "The Devils" (1960) by John Whiting based on Huxley's book.

Contents

[edit] Reaction

Since the time of its release, the film has caused enormous controversy. In the UK, it was banned by 17 local authorities, and everywhere attracted many scathing reviews. Judith Crist called it a "grand fiesta for sadists and perverts", while Derek Malcolm called it "a very bad film indeed". However, it won the award for Best Director - Foreign Film in the Venice Film Festival, while the National Board of Review, USA, awarded Ken Russell best director for The Devils and his next film, The Boy Friend. In 2002, when 100 film-makers and critics were asked to cite what they considered to be the ten most important films ever made, The Devils featured in the lists submitted by critic Mark Kermode and director Alex Cox.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Set in 17th century France. Reed plays Urbain Grandier, a dissolute and proud but popular and well-regarded priest in the fortified city of Loudun. Needing to control the city and crush its Protestantism, Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) and Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) conspire to have Grandier accused of witchcraft and of corrupting the local convent, headed by the deformed Sister Jeanne (Redgrave). She is a neurotic, sexually obsessed with Grandier. She inspires many into baseless attacks on Grandier as an incubus and witch. After being tried by the lunatic inquisitor Barre (Michael Gothard), in an hysterical atmosphere of religious extremes and outrageous behaviour, Grandier is condemned and burned.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Censorship

The film's combination of religious themes and imagery combined with explicit sexual content was a test for the British Board of Film Classification that at the time was under pressure from socially conservative lobbying groups. In order to get an 'X' certificate Russell made sacrificial cuts of some of the nudity, although the studio had lopped off several scenes prior to submission, notably a two-and-a-half-minute sequence depicting crazed naked nuns sexually assaulting a statue of Christ was removed at the studio's insistence before the film was submitted to the BBFC censors, who removed a further 89 seconds. All of this material was presumed lost or destroyed until critic Mark Kermode found the complete "Rape of Christ" sequence and several other deleted scenes in 2002. Although some material may have been lost forever, the NFT was able to show The Devils in the fullest possible state in 2004. This uncut version premiered at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film in March 2006. Its fate in the USA was even more stringent, with a further set of cuts made to even more of the nudity with some key scenes (including Sister Jeanne's crazed visions, exorcism and the climactic burning) shorn of the more explicit detail.

The British version remains the most complete one in circulation, although there are long promised plans to release the uncut version on DVD.

[edit] External links

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