The Devils

The Devils

1971

Director- Ken Russell

Cast- Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Murray Melvin, Michael Gothard, Georgina Hale, Kenneth Colley

            

     The movie is based on the real life case of Urbain Grandier, a French priest who was accused of sorcery and blamed for the possession of several nuns by demons. His “trial” involved torture and ended in an execution. Whether he was really a sorcerer, or just one of the thousands of innocents caught up in the witchcraft hysteria of the period, is a question for the historians. His trial did produce a rather sinister contract where he supposedly sold his soul to Satan, signed by the devil and several important demons. Whether the contract is genuine or contrived is, again, a question for historians.

            

    

    The Devils paints Grandier (portrayed by Oliver Reed) in a much more sympathetic light. Grandier is a womanizer who doesn’t seem to have any problem violating his vows of celibacy, including carelessly tossing aside a girl he gets pregnant. To say he is amoral would be inaccurate. Grandier seems to operate according to his own morality, a morality that is tainted by a self-destructive urge. Although he seems ambivalent about being the spiritual leader of his town, he has a genuine interest in helping them maintain their independence from the French crown and that eternal villain of The Three Musketeers, Cardinal Richelieu. This makes him some political enemies.

            

     Father Grandier’s reputation as a womanizer seems to be the worst kept secret in town and several of the Sisters in the local nunnery lust after him, particularly the Mother Superior, Sister Jeanne (Redgrave). Jeanne is a pathetic figure, a hunchback who dreams only of being beautiful and finding love. To her, Grandier has taken on Christ like significance in her mind, even though she has never met him.

            

     Grandier meets Madeline (Gemma Jones), a young girl whose love convinces him to give up his philandering ways. They are “secretly” married but word spreads eventually to Sister Jeanne who feels spurned and rejected. She accuses him of sorcery and this is just what Grandier’s enemies need to engineer his downfall. The entire convent degenerates into debauchery as the various nuns are “possessed” and debased by their interrogators.

            

     

     The film has a salacious reputation that is frankly unearned. There is some nudity, but not nearly as much as some of the more prominent exploitation films of the era. There is almost no violence until the last few minutes of the film. What the film does have in spades is a clear disdain for the Church and a few instances of sacrilegious imagery. The film has undergone severe censorship and finding an unaltered copy is rather difficult since it has never been in print for the home video market. Various versions of 103 to 109 minutes have been released. Apparently the full original cut was between 111 to 117 minutes. The version I saw was 114 minutes and I have to assume it was complete as it had all of the scenes that I had read were cut out, including the “infamous” scene where naked nuns cavort upon a crucifix.

            

     This film illustrates the danger of censorship. Taking out even a single scene can drastically alter a film’s artistic vision. Imagine Empire Strikes Back without “I am your father” or God forbid, Ben Hur without the chariot race! You’d think the important actors and the director involved would be enough to justify preservation of the film for posterity’s sake. But such is the world we live in.

            

     The Devils is not a great film. It is a good film however. It is artistically done and features sympathetic, dynamic characters. I don’t normally advocate movie piracy, but a bootleg copy is the only way, as of this writing, that you can see the movie as it was meant to be seen.

 

 

The contract from Urbain Grandier's trial.