Review of The Devils (1971) by Richard C — 14 Sep 2009

"We shall have pleasure without end, a series of infinite beginnings, and sensual delights everlasting.".

"...I'm pregnant".

"And so it ends.".

Vanessa Redgrave steals this show...one of the most intense films Ive ever seen, on so many levels. Amazing sets, editing techniques are both brutal and brillaint at times and performances, dialogue, monologues, and music, as close to perfection as they get. Although Olvier Reed is a close second for great actors in this, as the greatest/worst preist ever.

The story is about the town of Loudon in France in the 1700's, who have just survived the Protestant vs. Catholic religious wars, barely due to the sound mind of their governer who has just died, and who was openly tolerant of both during a period where they were tearing each other to pieces. The plauge rages everywhere, and we get a first hand look at the psychotic "cures" for disease, which though not curing you, would insure you died an especially torturous death; like with jars of wasps dug into your skin and a crocodiles corpse between your legs. "What fresh lunacy is this?".

Oliver Reed plays Father Grandier, a libertine priest, who of sound and progressive mind when it comes to political and social life, moonlights as the towns ladies man. He is also cruel and selfish, the first line in this review are his, when the father of the student he impregnated confronts him, "I'll see you in hell Grandier!", "Walking on a living pavement of aborted bastards no doubt!", he says with a smile.

Vanessa Redgrave is mother superior in the town, and Grandier bieng the highest up priest, and most handsome, is something of a sex object to her and her fellow nuns. She fantasizes about him walking across the water and embracing her. She also has a hunchback, from a deformed spine, which has left her with a severe inferiority complex, and a viscious streak a mile wide. Redragave asks a girl why she thinks most of the nuns are there, the girl responds, "becuase they want to serve God", which Redgrave laughs off, "Most of the sisters are here because their families were too poor to afford a propery dowery, or else they were too ugly or inept to be married off.".

There is a Cardinal Richelieu who wants to drive out all of the prostestants and create a France where Church and state are one, but Loudon, serves as haven for religious intergration and general progressivness.

Redgrave lust for Grandier becomes all consuming, and out of jealously, madness, or self loathing, she fabricates a story of her bieng seduced by him, and when the Cardinal get's a whiff of this, he sends a full Inquisition and the story expands, to Grandier seducing the whole convent into Satanic orgies with him and various demons. Redgrave and her fellow nuns are told they were made "whores of the devil" and encourgaed/threatened/ordered to act the part, they run naked, speak blashphemies, dance around in the forest, etc, 17th century "Girls Gone Wild" basically. They follow suit as daughters of the Devil, just as strongly as they followed suit as daughters of God, as it's all a matter of whose calling the shots, and the mallebility between the two is what Russel wants to highlight for us. Of course, this is after the severe torture to attempt to drive the devils out of them. Especially harsh for Redgrave...and not for the weak of stomach.

Grandier is put on trial, and has to defend himself, and reason in general, in a world where madness is a greater political tool. Though far from moral (no one in this film is), Grandier is the lesser evil. But his reputation for seducing the town's maidnes, work agains this favor, especially after knocking up the magistrates daughter. The trial is a freak show, a carnival, and a debauched pornographic spectacle, that repulses the King, initially, but comes to be viewed as an entertainment, by him and the rest of the town. And what effect can reason have on spectacle?

The relationship between repression, perversion, and righteousness get's put under the microscope. The masses who attend services and the trial are just as interested in hearing the juicy details of the sins, as they are the right way of living (which in the backward, throw our shit out the windows and live in our own filth, 17th century Europe could be just about anything).

This just may be too much for some though, it really is horrfying, but no better film explores, sex/pain, political/personal, spiritual/physical, and male/female realtionships between nuns & priests and the masses and their authority figures. Based loosely on a book by Aldous Huxely, about the real life witch trials at Loudon in the 1700's, Ken Russell theatricality(finally) perfectly fits the material.

Russel uses amazing sets design and huge crowds, to transport us into the plauged city gone mad. The play's within the film and the processesions, and meetings, have a granduer and opulence that isnt an opposite of the choas and anarchy around them but an extension of it. Just as Russel leads us to see, sin and The Devil, as not so much opposites of religious heirachy but extensions of them, margins which establish the potency of the center.

It's also wickedly funny, and suprisingly moving, and emotional. Grandeir is a belivable anti-hero, and Redgrave is electrifying, sympathetic, and pathetically sad, in the same breath. Her laugh in this freaks me out so much! The dark ages, were trully a terrifying and psychotic period, in human history, and Russel's firebrand style is perfectly suited for it's exposition.

The Devils was largely ingored on it's release because of it's graphic everything. I decided to write a new review of this, since my last one, didnt come close to doing it justice. It's still explosive and distrubing by modern film standards, and even in the free-whelling seventies I can see how this would rub alot of people the wrong way. It feautres top caliber acting, virtuoso directing, and a story as exhausting as it is devasting, and mind boggling for it's basis in actual history. Not for the faint of heart. But recommended viewing for anyone interested in a true forgetten masterpeice of cinema.

"The Crucible" on an epic scale, where the madness of the characters spills over into the form of the film itself.