The Devils
The Governor of Loudin has died, the masked funeral services led by his successor, the charismatic Urbain Grandier, his voice echoing off the white stone walls as he delivers the readings, the nearby cloistered nuns of St Ursula squabbling and vying to catch a glimpse of him as the sombre procession passes by, a figurehead of the church and an object of forbidden desire.
Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges chastising her sisters for their unseemly behaviour, her own sins of pride and lust manifest in obsession and shame, Grandier an unattainable but singular fixation which causes her to swoon in ecstasy which becomes a jealous fury when he clandestinely takes a wife, Madeleine De Brou.
Loudon protected by high walls, seeking to consolidate central control Cardinal Richelieu has bent the ear of the foppish King Louis XIII to see them destroyed to prevent it potentially being used as a stronghold, despatching first Baron Jean de Laubardemont to oversee the demolition, refused by Grandier, then witch hunter Father Pierre Barre who will undermine his position based on the accusations of Jeanne that he possessed her.
The documented Loudon possessions of 1634 the basis of Aldous Huxley’s 1952 non-fictional exploration The Devils of Loudon, in 1960 John Whiting wrote a play inspired by the events, both of them sources for Altered States writer and director Ken Russell in The Devils, originally released in 1971 and summarily cut and banned in various territories for its controversial, sacreligious and shocking depiction of the dark days of the middle ages.
A film of lust, abuse, cruelty and blasphemy, The Three Musketeers’ Oliver Reed is Grandier, magnificent and pious, a hedonist intellect committed to the church and to himself, seducing and dismissing Philippe (Georgina Hale) when she finds she is pregnant, outraging her father Louis Trincant (John Woodvine) yet genuine in his devotion to Madeleine (Gemma Jones), never having set eyes on Jeanne (Murder on the Orient Express’ Vanessa Redgrave), the basis of her slanderous testimony incomprehensible to him.
A woman of wild eyes and a spine as twisted as her reasoning, her testimony is the weapon used against Grandier by Father Barre (Michael Gothard) as Canon Jean Mignon (Murray Melvin) gleefully watches on, she and the innocents of her sisterhood collateral damage in the battle between church and state to establish dominance where truth is created by those who wield the greatest power, religious fervour justifying any atrocities.
The plague pits already piled high with bodies, the tool of the witch hunters is torture, red blood splashed on clean white tile, The Devils an insane film of extremes and absurdities, shot by David Watkin on sets designed by Derek Jarman with costumes by Shirley Russell, both beautiful and repulsive from the opening moments of Jeanne’s fantasy of Grandier walking on water before she dries his feet with her loosened hair.
Her shame driving her desperation, perhaps feeling her deformity is a physical expression of her spiritual failing, she is the trigger of the avalanche which causes the walls to crumble, Grandier’s pride blinding him to the futility of resisting the endemic corruption which sees him as an obstacle to be removed, de Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton) using her as the fulcrum against which he anchors the levers of change to unleash his mad engines of destruction.
The Devils is currently on general release
