The Devils

Plot synopsis:
In 17th Century France, Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) is influencing King Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) in an attempt to gain further power. He convinces Louis that the fortifications of cities throughout France should be demolished to prevent Protestants from uprising. Louis agrees, but forbids Richelieu from carrying out demolitions in the town of Loudun, having made a promise to its governor not to damage the town.Meanwhile in Loudun, the Governor has died, leaving control of the city to Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), a dissolute and proud but popular and well-regarded Catholic priest. He is having an affair with a relative of Father Canon Mignon (Murray Melvin), another priest in the town, unaware that the deformed, neurotic Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), head of the local convent, is sexually obsessed with him. She asks for Grandier to become the convent's new confessor. Grandier secretly marries another woman, Madeline De Brou (Gemma Jones), but news of this reaches Sister Jeanne, driving her to insanity (this includes an attack where Sister Jeanne viciously attacks Madeleine when the latter brings back a book that the former had lent her, and Sister Jeanne accuses Madeleine of being a "fornicator" and "sacrilegious bitch", among other things).Baron de Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton) arrives with orders to demolish the city, overriding Grandier's orders to stop. Grandier summons the town's soldiers and forces Laubardemont to back down pending the arrival of an order for the demolition from King Louis. Grandier departs Loudun to visit the King. In the meantime, Sister Jeanne is informed by Father Mignon that he is to be her new confessor. She informs him of Grandier's marriage and affairs, and also inadvertently accuses Grandier of witchcraft and of possessing her. Mignon relays this information to Laubardemont. In the process, the information is boiled down to just the claim that Grandier has bewitched the convent and has had commerce with the Devil. With Grandier away from Loudon, Laubardemont and Mignon decide to find evidence against him.Laubardemont summons the lunatic inquisitor Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard), a "professional witch-hunter", whose interrogations actually involve depraved acts of "exorcism", including the forced administration of enemas to his victims. Sister Jeanne claims that Grandier has bewitched her, and the other nuns do the same. A public exorcism erupts in the town, in which all of the nuns remove their clothes and enter a state of religious frenzy. Duke Henri de Condé (actually king Louis in disguise) arrives, claiming to be carrying a holy relic which can remove the "devils" possessing the nuns. Father Barre "exorcises" the nuns with it. They appear as though they have been cured until Condé/Louis reveals the case allegedly containing the relic to be empty. Despite this proof that the possessions and the exorcisms are a sham, both continue unabated, eventually descending into a massed orgy in which the nuns sexually assault and desecrate a statue of Christ.In the midst of the chaos, Grandier and his wife return and are immediately arrested. After being given a ridiculous show trial, Grandier is shaven and tortured although at his execution he eventually manages to convince Mignon that he is innocent. The judges, clearly under orders from Laubardemont, sentence Grandier to death by burning at the stake. Laubardemont has also obtained permission to destroy the city's fortifications. Despite pressure on Grandier to confess to the trumped-up charges, he refuses. He is then taken to be burnt at the stake. His executioner promises to strangle him rather than let him suffer the agonising death by fire that he would otherwise experience. However, the overzealous Barre starts the fire himself, and Mignon, now visibly panic-stricken about the possibility of Grandier's innocence, pulls the noose tight before it can be used to strangle the priest. As Grandier burns, Laubardemont gives the order for explosive charges to be set off and the city walls are blown up, causing the people to flee.After the execution, Barre leaves Loudun to continue his witch-hunting activities elsewhere in the southwest of France. Laubardemont informs Sister Jeanne that Mignon has been put away in an asylum for claiming that Grandier was innocent (the explanation given is that he is demented), and that "with no signed confession to prove otherwise, everyone has the same opinion". He gives her one of Grandier's charred bones and leaves. Sister Jeanne, now completely broken, masturbates pathetically with the charred femur. Grandier's wife, having been released is seen walking away from the ruined city as the film ends.

Tags: comedy, cult, violence, psychedelic, absurd, satire, tragedy

Review:
Cited by director Alex Cox and critic Mark Kermode as one of the ten greatest achievements in cinema of all time, The Devils is based on a true story set in France in 1634 about the evils of the union of church and state controlled by power hungry, perverse men who prey on faith and fear, and one priest, Father Grandier, who tries to protect the liberties and walls of his city, Loudun.
Whether your first was "Altered States" or (like me) "The Devils," you learn early on that if Mr. Russell's name is listed as director and/or writer, you can expect to be at least a little disturbed."The Devils" is, in my humble opinion, one of the best films ever made.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Furthermore, The Devils is possessed (pun very much intended) by a ceaseless, madcap energy that is easy to get swept up in and over the course of the film, you will witness flagellation, nun on nun lesbian action, deranged inquisitors chanting "confess" as they beat people with hammers and (perhaps most bizarrely of all), Oliver Reed duelling with a man using a stuffed crocodile in place of a sword.Yes, it is a bit uneasy to watch sometimes.
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..
British director Ken Russell's adaption of Aldous Huxley's book "The Devils of Loudun" is one of the most origional, controversial and daring films ever made.
The film takes place in 17th-century France and centres on the hypocritical and licentious behaviour of debauched priest Father Urbain Grandier, brilliantly played by Oliver Reed.
best religious movie ever seen, oliver reed looks and act like he already know about his destiny, but he is surprised at the end of all that violence , all the screams...
No matter how much I tried, I just could not get involved in the story - the shock factor is OK at first, but when there's nothing of substance to back it up, it grows repetitive and starts to feel like a bit of a gimmick.Russell does start to show some focus in the final 30 minutes or so, but even in these final 30 minutes we're treated to some rather formulaic plot twists that did nothing to improve my opinion of the film as a whole.Looking at the acting then again I'll use the words 'over the top'.
The blending of a complex story and high camp courtesy of director Ken Russell works really well, and while the film does suffer from less than interesting moments at times; in general, the movie is a lot of fun to watch, and it's most definitely a huge spectacle.
Grandier's problems start when he rejects the advances of the mother superior, who then hatches a plot involving a convent of possessed nuns to overthrow him on the grounds of heresy, and its plot that the Cardinal and his power hungry entourage are only too happy to be a part of.Ken Russell populates his film with a host of memorable and over the top characters; all of which get to quote brilliant lines of dialogue, which bodes extremely well with the camp style that the director has chosen to make a big part of his film.
The film is clearly not perfect, as there are too many scenes that don't make a lot of sense and aren't all that entertaining; but most of these are towards the beginning, and as an overall spectacle, Russell's masterpiece is hard to top and it comes highly recommended to all fans of cult cinema..
Evidently Ken Russell took many of the historical facts in Aldous Huxley's "The Devils of Loudon," and added large parts from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and what looks to be a particularly over-the-top college production of "Marat/Sade."   First of all, I have to say that my main interest in the movie was just to check out the art direction.
We see a Church in this 17th century that is at best power-hungry and lustful (with Oliver Reed's Father Grandier), and at its worst a total farce of anything that resembles the teachings of Jesus Christ: completely bonkers Priests and high-court officials ready to take anything resembling accusations of witchcraft and heresy- after of course some torture is done, not least of which on the Sister Jeanne, and able to use their influence and maneuvering of power (and connection to the King Louis XIII) to do as they will.
which is what makes the second half of the film in particular so staggering.I'm reminded slightly of A Clockwork Orange specifically (not to forget comparisons to Ingmar Bergman's fascinating dissection of the moral horror of religion, and Terry Gilliam's outlandish visual constructions and iconography); we have a character like Grandier, who confounds a viewer with how he is a "hero" in a story where he isn't really one.
And Russell doesn't care how far he goes in depicting the mania of the period, starting out with ravenous plague - lots of dead bodies, close-ups of maggots coming out of skulls, fires raging outside of houses where people dying are "healed" by wasps and a crocodile (!) He also saves some of the delirious-best for those scenes where the nuns go all-out crazy - in large part by way of, sort of, encouragement from the Beatle- Priest Father Bare- and for little asides like when the King is shooting at people in blackbird costumes.
Sometimes I feel that Ken Russell is too concerned with outrageousness for outrageousness' sake, and his films become just too camp for their own good, but 'The Devils' manages a fine balance between art and exploitation, and ends up being his most successful movie.
The loosening of censorship restrictions in the late sixties and seventies led to a frenetic period in the history of the cinema, when nothing exceeded like excess and when filmmakers tried to break as many taboos as they could in the course of one movie, often egged on by critics who assumed that a controversial film was automatically a good one.
The Devils (of Loudon) is a powerful movie of a stunning play and novel, brought to the screen by fearless director Ken Russell (yes, it is over the top at times but makes it's point neatly); stars Oliver Reed (absolutely wonderful in this, a true tragic figure) and Vanessa Redgrave (as twisted as her physical form); and designer Derek Jarman, who puts into the set of The Devils the talent he'd later bring to his own films.
The fictional characters here are based on a play, brought to vivid--sometimes ghastly--life by director Ken Russell (Who better to take this helm?), and the narrative itself is carried out to its inevitable conclusion (not many people survived these times, so I'm not giving away anything...if you know something about World History).
Overall, The Devils is one of Russell's best and most fascinating films but it is very easy to see why it caused so much controversy at the time of release(it was very different for the time and the audience weren't prepared to be that shocked, the same treatment happened with Witchfinder General with Vincent Price as well).
It might have provoked outrage at the time of its release through the flouting of religious and sexual taboos, but retains its strength through the portrayal of an individual standing up for freedom of love and thought, resisting the pressures of church and state,this conveyed in a bizarrely stylized manner that seems often closer to opera or music theater than to narrative historical film.
Russell is at his best in the few "visionary" sequences (like those where Vanessa Redgrave imagines Oliver Reed as Jesus Christ, walking on water and, later, coming down from the cross to kiss her), but he's at his worst when he has to shoot one scene that must follow the previous one clearly and logically.
Some of Loudun's women see in Grandier a way to get to love and perhaps even a kind of mystical redemption through Jesus.It's a strange time, or at least, it appears so to us because we are so historically, far away from that mentality, a mentality which will accept the existence of devils as body invading spirits who need to be purged through painful tortures, while turning a blind eye to the sadistic powers which they allow to rule them.
OK he was not a priest not that i know of , strange affecting and surreal we got nuns in an orgy torture religious blasphemy thats Russell sideswiping his own upbringing , lots of great character actors though , a definite snapshot of the seventies when censorship was breaking down , always controversial anyone seen the totally uncensored version?.
With no doubt the most exuberant , explicit Ken Russel film , it is , besides a serious lack of the historical facts , a movie which main goal is strictly to shock the audience by putting  pomposity on the psychedelic scenes , which are very impressive nevertheless .
THE DEVILS, Ken Russell's grandiose and provocatively scandalous adaptation of the notorious witchcraft trial in 17th Century France, has its own indisputable artistic flourish albeit its thinly veiled obloquy and ridicule of the insidious backscratching between religion and politics, actualized in the most wanton style which can be both riveting and endurance-testing.Father Urban Grandier (Reed), a Catholic priest in the city of Loudun, is as liberal in his attitude towards Protestants as in his views on sex, woman and marriage, which makes him a fair game in the eyes of Cardinal Richelieu (Logue), who is spoiling for a theocratic regime by ingratiating himself with a flamboyantly attired Louis XIII (Armitage), who opens the film with a ludicrous playacting.
Ken Russell's infamous masterpiece, "The Devils," focuses on a seventeenth century French village where a group of Ursuline nuns incite chaos, sacrilege, and full-blown Catholic hysteria after they accuse a local priest of witchcraft.If anyone has read Aldous Huxley's brilliant historical novel on which the film is based, then they are well familiar with the story, which is actually based on historical fact.
Counter to her is Gemma Jones as Grandier's naive "bride." Michael Gothard is even more over-the-top than Reed, playing a mad witch hunter, and Georgina Hale is fantastic and sinister as Grandier's sidelined sexual exploitee.As far as my claim that "The Devils" may be the most religious film ever made, by that I mean that it is profoundly critical of institutionalized religion and its turning in on itself.
"The Devils" is a film so wasted and badly filmed,that not even turning away would do me justice.On a scale of bad films,"The Devils" had me expressing feelings of anger and boredom.From what I heard,this was a really graphic film.Maybe it was for its time.I was never offended by the subject of this film.What did offend me was the visual style of the film.The cinematography in the film looks as if someone wiped a dirty rag over the camera lens.The set designs are depressing and the directing is not even good."The Devils" was banned in Italy and Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave were threatened with three years jail time if they ever set foot in that country."The Devils" is a film that might be a film in which the reason why I don't like the film is because I don't get the point.I get the point.I knew what the story was and tried to follow it.I could only walk so many miles before I reach  the end of the road."The Devils" had a long road and unfortunately,I was on it."The Devils" is so bad of a film,you will need a priest to forgive you for watching this film.Shame,shame on me..
1971THE DEVILSDirectorKen Russell Oliver ReedVanessa RedgraveDudley Sutton I worked for about sixteen weeks on this film standing/in for Dudley and doing every crowd scene possible..
Great movie, in my opinion Ken Russell's best film.
Urbain Grandier is a political victim of Richelieu,but his downfall is more hilarious than tragic.Note that his lifestyle is not so clean like he might like to suggest-but probably Russel is more tolerant towards him,because he was less perverted than other Catholic clergymen and his strictly heterosexual affairs should make him more appealing,more of a good guy(like the famous off-screen ladies man Oliver Reed,he should be stirring viewers admiration with his numerous affairs,suggesting a sort of natural,Darwinist,primitive morality-he should be funny or captivating,it is actually just pathetic).In fact both Grandier and Richelieu are the products of an amoral age,both of them being hedonistic and conceited,cynical and unscrupulous opportunists using the Catholic Church for their own career and purposes.Neither one of them is more moral than the other,the only difference being that Richelieu is much more influential,shrewd,powerful.The sets are chilling and futuristic,but simply hideous.Why not stick to the old-fashioned period piece?
It is Ken Russell's most tolerable film to sit through, because it is always interesting and contains many memorables scenes and images, but at the same time it is highly controversial and challenging, often making you want to turn away from the screen.The story is of a highly influential priest in the French city of Loudon.
There are some boring parts but these are widely made up by some ultra-impressive sequences, like the scene in which Mother Superior has a vision of Christ's crucifixion blend with her own sexual fantasies about Father Graindier.The flawless acting performances by Oliver Reed and Vanessa bring this film to a higher dimension.
The film oozes style & visual flair with some beautiful yet at the same time disturbing scenes featuring naked Nun's, torture, religious fanaticism & sex set against the impressively realised backdrop of 17th Century France.
The acting is very strong here with a career best from Oliver Reed, he certainly though it was his best performance.The Devils has a big reputation to live up & while I think it can't quite manage it it's still a challenging film which deals with issues many may not agree with or want to watch.
It's odd that a movie that was so controversial at the time of its release seems almost forgotten today, except by collectors and Ken Russell fans.I have only seen the film for the first time recently, and was simply amazed at how good it is.
I was expecting something much loonier and bizarre, based on Russell's general reputation and the uproar surrounding the film, but it was almost restrained, given the horrible nature of the historical reality it deals with.Oliver Reed's performance is possibly the best thing he ever did, and Vanessa Redgrave was truly amazing as the tormented Sister Jeanne.
Watching it on the big screen was certainly a bit too much for me at the time, and I had to close my eyes during some of the ending scenes.I will not tell the story of this film in my comments as there are many comments that do just this, but would like to bring out some of the major themes about these events.Bishop Grandier is the voice of rationality, contrasting with the superstitious behaviour of many of the townspeople.
Based on the historical essay by author Aldous Huxley's "The Devils of Loudon." and the play, 'The Devils' by playwright, John Whiting, the movie tells the story of Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) who hopes to clean the city from the exploitation of the Church, only to find himself, accursed of witchcraft by a sexually repressed nun, Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave), whom under the control of the very corrupt, local Cardinal, Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue).
I loved this film, greatly enjoyed itIt's got a good story, beautiful sets, great dialogue, amazing acting by the majority of the actors, especially by leads Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave.