THE DEVILS
UK, 1971, 111 minutes, Colour.
Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Gemma Jones, Murray Melvin, Michael Gotthard.
Directed by Ken Russell.
The Devils, according to many critics and audiences, was the last straw in cinema sensationalism and in Ken Russell's decline into flamboyant extravagance. It certainly contains many hysterical sequences that are violent, ugly, sensationally sexual and of fanatical religiosity.
However, this is the style of the film deliberately chosen by Russell - controlled by Women in Love, let go of in The Music Lovers, played with enjoyably in The Boy Friend, getting back to control in Savage Messiah.
But the mind behind the film seems to be saying something more serious and coherent about religion, politics, the exploitation of religion by politics, hysteria, hatred, jealousy. It also queries conventions of morality. The officially religious people have the double standards. The amoral priest, Urbain Grandier, however, begins to find God in his being persecuted and martyred.
Oliver Reed gives a quietly controlled performance to give the frenetic film a reasonable focus. Vanessa Redgrave offers a caricature in her role of Mother Jeanne, the Superior of a Convent of women forced to be nuns, able to be manipulated for all kinds of purposes.
Not a film for very many audiences. But interesting for those who follow Ken Russell's films, and films about religion.
1. Why was this film made? Entertainment? Education? Sensation?
2. Was it well made? Too hysterical? Why?
3. The impact of the prologue - the court, morale, Richelieu and Church and State, a perverted atmosphere for the politics of a country?
4. The plague setting - how realistic and disgusting? The plague as a symbol of the country and of the film's theme?
5. The artificiality of the film's sets, e.g. the city walls, the convents How did this affect audience response in terms of identification with or distancing from the situations? Did it keep a balance between realism and the conventions of the drama?
6. Urban Grandier as a man - how admirable? How despicable? His sense of duty as a priest ministering in the plague? The civic respect and his patriotism and authority? His sensuality (in the standards of the times) - the seductions, pregnancies, use of confessional? The enmity of nobles, his curate? His celebration of the Eucharist in the tranquillity of nature? What was the true self of Grandier?
7. How did he change during the film? How did his values deepen as the world went hysterical around him? How did he find goodness in his marriage, intervention for Loudun, his trial, suffering and death? How did he find himself and God?
8. The nuns - why were they in the convent? Does this explain their attitudes and behaviour and why they could be manipulated? The role of enforced chastity and the hysteria consequent on this?
9. Sister Jeanne - how insane? How influenced by her back - the dream of Grandier walking on the water, her rosary and Grandier coming down from the Cross (the taste of the filming of this)? Why so obsessed - religion, sexuality, repression, physical suffering?
10. How did this contrast with Grandier's love for Madeleine and the gentle wedding? Why did Madeleine trust Grandier (after her experience of her mother's death, her asking Sister Jeanne to join the convent and her revulsion at this)?
11. Why did Sister Jeanne conspire against Grandier? What did she hope to achieve?
12. Why did the curate Mignon plot against Grandier? How did Grandier's sins catch up with him as the plots mounted?
13. How did the politicians use the situation? How was religion using politics and politics using religion?
14. Why did Grandier serve Loudun? Did he have any chance to serve against Richelieu? The impact of the court sequence with the Cardinal, and the King shooting Protestants? (Hell filmed? The "Bye, Bye Blackbird"?).
15. The nature of the exorcisms, syringes etc... How repulsive? Did things happen like this - the soldiers, priests, townspeople watching? The barbarity and the enjoyment of the barbarity?
16. Has it understandable that the nuns should agree that they were possessed after being threatened with death in the pit?
17. Fr. Barre, the exorcist,(too modern looking?) - credible? His ambivalent role? How much did he believe? The episode of the King's showing all was fraud? Did he condone the political use of hysteria?
18. Grandier's arrest and trial - what state of peace had he arrived at in the sequence where his wife went to meet him; its tranquil beauty as a contrast to the rest of the proceedings? The destruction of Grandier's possessions? The injustice of the trial and the determination to destroy him?
19. Grandier under torture - (was the torture too graphically visualised in the film?) - integrity, no compromise with truth, a martyr ("witness") to what he stood for? How had he changed as a man? The horror of his death?
20. Torture and death happened like this. How necessary is it for modern audiences to see it? Why?
21. The end of the hysteria. Where did this leave Sister Jeanne and the other nuns? Did she and they know what they had done? How callous was the attitude of the Baron de Laubardemont?
22. The irony of the destruction of the walls of Loudun? The purpose of the whole "devils" episode? The comment visualised by Madeleine's walking away from the ruins?
23. Was this a religious film? The presentation of true and false religion? The use of so-called religion for other purposes?
24. If Oliver Reed had not played Grandier as a sane and changing man but as highly powered as the rest of the cast, would the film have been the same?
25. Has this kind of history a value for today?
