Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ (1971)

Among the most controversial films ever produced by a major Hollywood studio, Ken Russell’s The Devils is a ferocious collision of religious hysteria, political intrigue, and psychosexual extravagance, now restored to its incendiary glory. Drawing upon Aldous Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting’s stage adaptation, Russell revisits 17th-century France, where the charismatic, sexually promiscuous priest Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) becomes the target of a calculated campaign of persecution after his defense of the fortified city of Loudun threatens Cardinal Richelieu’s ambitions. When the sexually repressed Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) accuses Grandier of demonic possession, ecclesiastical authorities exploit the ensuing frenzy to advance their political objectives. Against Derek Jarman’s startlingly modernist production design, Russell unleashes a barrage of grotesque religious spectacle, erotic delirium, and institutional brutality, exposing how spiritual authority can be manipulated to legitimize political repression. Yet anchoring the film’s calculated excesses is Reed’s extraordinary performance, locating a profoundly human struggle for individual conscience amid collective madness. More than half a century after its scandalous release, The Devils has lost none of its urgency, its depiction of religious fervor manipulated for political ends and public hysteria mobilized against individual conscience retaining a disturbing contemporary resonance.