Taking great stylistic liberties with History, Ken Russell tells in his own way, always as hysterical and provocative, the tragedy of The Devils of Loudun (1634), a dark affair of sorcery entangling exorcisms, Inquisition, revenge and politics.
The Devils, the most controversial film in Ken Russell's career and one of his masterpieces. The project is timely for Russell, who will have distilled his sense of provocation with increasing audacity during his first film productions - already latent in his documentaries for television including Dance of the Seven Veils, a film devoted to Richard Strauss and where he associates the composer with a Nazi. A billion dollar brain (1967) brought contagious insanity and excess to the very serious and cerebral spy series Harry Palmer. Women in Love (1969) demonstrated a daring sensuality for this adaptation of DH Lawrence and revealed for a scene the recurring theme in Russell of homosexuality which would be revealed explicitly in Tchaikovsky's biopic, The Music Lovers (1970 ). Each of these attempts will be successful despite the scandals, and it is a Ken Russell with full confidence and sure of his art who will attack The Devils.
The film transposes the affair of the devils of Loudun , news item which agitated France of the XVIIth century. A witch hunt and alleged cases of possession in a convent of Ursulines then served as a pretext for Cardinal Richelieu to submit the city of Loudun, soil of resistance to his power led by the Catholic priest Urbain Grandier. The case brought trial for Grandier, the source of this torment and accused of pacting with the devil, and he was executed at the stake without having confessed to his crimes. Politics and religion made dangerous connections in this drama and, even if the filmmaker would illustrate it with his flashy aesthetic, all the most revolting facts portrayed in The Devils are proven.
The episode naturally inspired literature and Russell therefore adapted the book The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley published in 1952 (for the construction), but also the play The Devils by John Whiting played in 1960 (for the dialogues). After finishing the screenplay, Russell addresses it to the United Artist who produced Women in Love and The Music Lovers, but executive producers terrified by its content and soon pull out. Warner, reassured by Russell's recent successes, therefore finances the project without undoubtedly detailing its content too much and persuaded to produce a drama in prestigious costume. The shooting will go smoothly, the real problems arising only in post-production and during the American release.
From the start of the film, one can clearly divide the frame of the narrative into three environments and as many states of mind. First of all, we have this atypical city of Loudun, whose imposing geometric architecture offset by the immaculate whiteness translates the crossroads of modernity that these places constitute. The bloody wars of religion and the ravages of the plague taught Catholics and Protestants to live together in peace, making Loudun a world apart from the religious conflict then vivid everywhere else. This delicate balance draws a tumultuous backside at night when the impulses are unleashed, sexual of course but also morbid through the corpses littering the streets, charlatans treating the plague with doubtful remedies. Righteousness and peace by day, lust and excess by night, these two facets reflect the good and the bad that shelter all human beings. This dichotomy, the priest Urban Grandier (Oliver Reed) learned to accept it. He is a man who surrenders to the pleasures of the senses with selfishness (this young pregnant mistress whom he leaves alone to his fate), but also a leader who recalls Loudun's independence from Richelieu's agents who seek to destroy her the ramparts, symbols of its Protestant past.
Others cannot respond with the same strength of character to this duality. This is the case of the superior mother Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave), deformed but no less consumed by a devouring desire for Urbain Grandier. This guilt and this frustration are the cause of a torment which is expressed by the most painful expression of piety (autoflagellations, corporal punishment) which cannot stem more and more tormented and outrageous fantasies. Russell can thus deploy the most controversial scene in the film, "The Rape of Christ", where Grandier's features replace those of Jesus on the cross and where his massive body imposes itself on that of Joan whose tremors express as much the stupor that feverish orgasm. Stiff, frozen and quivering in the alcove of the convent, unleashed and eager for desire in her dreams, Vanessa Redgrave is extraordinary in expressing the growing madness of her character. When Grandier accepts what he has come to find, sincere love with Madeleine de Brou (Gemma Jones), Jeanne will finally go insane. Their two journeys are made in parallel, Russell alternating romantic elegiac sequences for the couple Grandier / Madeleine and various graphic slippages for Jeanne with in particular frenzied masturbation sequences. The machismo of the time is subtly exposed, the convents being nests of frustrated old girls who think of caring in isolation and in faith for their unfulfilled desires when men, even in the religious habit, can express faith and carnal attraction.
The story takes place at a time of reconquest for the Roman Catholic Church, a goal that serves political rather than religious ambitions. This aura of the church, after having drawn an imperfect but human side through the characters of Grandier and Jeanne, will adopt a cold face under the calculating features of Richelieu (Christopher Logue). The second part of the film is thus a long series of hysterical tables serving the plot in order to confuse Grandier and bring down the city. It is the third space which this time truly constitutes hell on Earth. Toy of designs which exceeds it, Jeanne will undergo the last insults, Russell deploying all the madness of which he is capable in sequences of inquisition which as crazy as they are they reflect the reality of the events.
The strength of the director is to bring there an atmosphere of pure nightmare through the baroque lighting of David Watkin, the neoclassical decorations of Derek Jarman where after the clinical austerity of the beginning we move on to compositions of overloaded shots, close-ups and aggressive zooms on deformed faces in grins of pure dementia. Russell may film the confusion, but his staging never gives way. The framing draws the totalitarian dimension of this church (the architectural lines that reveal the prison, the leaden screed and the oppressive side of this society, especially during the final trial scene) and the biting irony hits the nail on the head. The inquisition thus frees a depravity which had relatively managed to be contained by the nuns who now indulge in the most extravagant orgies.
If there was any doubt about a sincere conviction of the inquisitors despite their revolting acts, the sequence in which they absolve themselves from their sin by a religious relic that is not one speaks volumes about their cynicism. Michael Gothard in a rock star-like witch hunter and agitation expresses the most chaotic side, when Murray Melvin - in a role similar to the deceitful tutor he will hold in Barry Lyndon (1975) - reveals the calculation and the hypocrisy of these fools of God. The peaceful and resigned presence of an inhabited Oliver Reed brings real height to the story, which does not deliver contrary to appearances an anti-religious statement but denounces the use that is made of the biblical message. The end is a long way of the cross where the tortures undergone by Grandier never give in to provocative gratuitousness, the situations being in the end more disturbing than the real bloody slippages which remain out of scope. It is greatness, righteousness and inner peace that accompany the martyr Grandier that we will remember, his painful march towards the pyre completely inspired by religious iconography in the compositions of shots and framing of Russell.
The city that has given in to this propaganda and hysteria does not seem to deserve its defender, and as soon as its last breath is released, the walls can collapse and let desolation come during a last freezing scene. The film will be a success at the height of its scandal but will pay the high price at the level of censorship. After a first full English exploitation, the horrified Warner will impose drastic cuts (the rape of Christ is almost amputated among others) for an American release which will turn short however. It will nevertheless be this censored version which will prevail during all future exploits of the film, and the original English montage - the real full version having only been succinctly broadcast - has only been visible since 2011, the year of the death of Ken Russell. The devils is a masterpiece that still embarrasses Warner around the edges, proof of its intact scope.
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