Rating: R | Runtime: 111 minutes
Release Date: July 16th, 1971 (USA) / July 25th, 1971 (UK)
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director(s): Ken Russell
Writer(s): Ken Russell / John Whiting (play) / Aldous Huxley (novel)

If you would remain free men, fight. Fight them or become their slaves.

Hard not to go into something as talked about in film circles like Ken Russell’s The Devils without expectations. I guess mine were that it would be crazier? More unhinged? Worthy of that X-rating? To find that it’s actually just a well-made, well-researched piece of history documenting the horrors wrought by a powerful and controlling church almost makes it seem … quaint by comparison.

It is a fascinating tale (based in part on John Whiting’s play as well as Aldous Huxley’s novel, which the former was also based). A priest whose sin is that he loves too much (Oliver Reed’s Urbain Grandier)—and by love I mean he sleeps with any attractive woman in his congregation no matter who her parents are—stands in the way of a Cardinal (Christopher Logue’s Richelieu) throwing his weight around in King Louis XIII’s court. So, he sends his lackeys (Dudley Sutton’s Laubardemont and Michael Gothard’s Father Barre) to frame the priest as a sorcerer to be burnt at the stake.

Add Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave), a hunchback Mother Superior whose lust for Grandier lets her play along with the ruse despite her own torture and blasphemy, and the whole story really becomes a trial of faith. Will Grandier let his desires of the flesh and ego lead him astray for personal salvation? Or will he stand tall for God and his own piety by refusing to give in to the accusations?

We kind of feel for his plight. We kind of have fun when Richelieu’s foot soldiers go wildly off-book to retrieve their confessions through S&M tactics they are obviously enjoying way too much. And we sit through a somber conclusion that shows how it was all just for petty revenge.

I guess I get why people love it so much (and I do wonder how much is lost without the infamous “Rape of Christ” scene), but it just feels like a solid piece of cinema vaunted for its inherent controversy.

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Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave in THE DEVILS.