“Do you remember the first time your thoughts were turned to evil things?”
Ken Russell’s controversial masterpiece — restored on 4K and including orgiastic footage that Warner Bros just couldn’t allow before now — is one of the great nun movies. It’s based on Aldous Huxley’s non-fiction book The Devils of Loudun, an account of the 17th century witchcraft trials in France. Vanessa Redgrave is Jeanne, a hunchbacked Ursuline abbess who is fixated on Oliver Reed’s libertine priest, Grandier, confessor to the abbey. In a period of political intrigue, inquisitors arrive to exorcise the devils loose in Loudun, and bring Grandier to heel…
Not for the faint of heart, The Devils is a deeply political film, and ran into censorship problems from the start. In North America it was originally released at 108 minutes, and in the UK at 111 minutes. The newly restored 114 minute version includes graphic scenes of torture and blasphemous sexual imagery.
Russell’s film may seem overly schematic, but his terrifying, fantastical nightmare images have astonishing psychological power.
Stephen Farber, New York Times
It’s a masterpiece in every sense of the word: hellishly good cinema with a surplus of raging ideas, beauty, horrors.
Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
The Devils is a frantic, grossly overwrought disaster probably unequalled for excesses in the history of the movies.
Martin Knelman, Globe and Mail
Ken Russell
Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Max Adrian, Dudley Sutton, Georgina Hale
UK
1971
English
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Credits
Producer
Ken Russell, Robert H. Solo
Screenwriter
Ken Russell
Cinematography
David Watkin
Editor
Michael Bradsell
Original Music
Peter Maxwell Davies
Production Design
Derek Jarman
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