The Devils **** (1971, Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Murray Melvin, Georgina Hale) – Classic Movie Review 3032

Vanessa Redgrave stars in Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) as a sexually repressed hunchback nun so obsessed with a priest (Oliver Reed) that she accuses him of witchcraft and says he has possessed her. 

Writer-producer-director Ken Russell’s outrageous, over-sized British 1971 movie version of the tale of the supposed possession of 17th-century French nuns and an exorcist’s torture of a priest to prove that he’s a Satanist is both a horror film and a sustained attack on churchmen and politicians.

Vanessa Redgrave stars as Sister Jeanne, a sexually repressed hunchback nun who is so obsessed with a priest, Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), that she accuses him of witchcraft and says that he has possessed her.

The director himself fashions the overwrought but coherent script from John Whiting’s play based in turn on English literary giant Aldous Huxley’s novel The Devils of Loudun. Its excesses (especially the surreal images, the dream of Christ and burning climax) shocked and outraged some audiences and critics at the time – and probably still can. But now it seems one of Russell’s finest, most ambitious and controlled projects.

The performances from a prize selection of British Equity of the day are first-rate. Also among the cast are Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Murray Melvin, Michael Gothard, Graham Armitage as Louis XIII, Georgina Hale, Brian Murphy, Christopher Logue as Cardinal Richelieu, John Woodvine, Andrew Faulds, Kenneth Coley, Judith Paris, Catherine Willmer and Iza Teller.

Both David Watkin’s cinematography and the artwork are first-class too. Future director (and gay saint) Derek Jarman did the production designs for Russell, as he did again for Russell’s Savage Messiah in 1972.

The Devils is directed by Ken Russell, runs 110 minutes, is made by Russo, is released by Warner Bros, is written by Ken Russell, based on John Whiting’s play, based on Aldous Huxley’s novel The Devils of Loudun, is shot by David Watkin, is produced by Robert H Solo and Ken Russell, is scored by Peter Maxwell Davies, and is designed by Derek Jarman.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3032

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