Is ‘The Devils’ Worship Justified?

“They don’t make them like they used to” is the eternal plaint of anyone who has lived long enough to be puzzled by shifts and drifts in culture. The truism bears repeating when considering Ken Russell’s “The Devils” (1971), a film undergoing a revival at the IFC Center. Given the picture’s checkered history, it counts as news that a fully-restored version of Russell’s final 2004 edit is hitting theaters. Several showings are already sold out; others will likely sell out as well. What might viewers think of Russell’s sadie-maisie spectacle in 2026?At the time of its release, “The Devils” was spurned by the Vatican, excoriated by critics, and rated “X” by the British Board of Film Censors and the Motion Picture Association of America. Significant cuts were made in an attempt to gain a greater audience with no one being satisfied with the resulting compromises. Warner Brothers did additional nipping-and-tucking to earn Russell’s picture an “R” rating, but, for the most part, treated the property like the most blasphemous of hot potatoes. Anyone wanting to trace the licensing history of “The Devils” will need a PhD in logistics and an infinitude of patience.Russell based his screenplay on a book by Aldous Huxley, “The Devils of Loudun” (1952), and a subsequent theatrical adaptation commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and authored by John Whiting. The story centers on Urbain Grandier (1590-1634), the parish priest at Loudun, a barricaded township in the western part of what was then the Kingdom of France. Well into his tenure, the not-so-good father was accused of impregnating the daughter of a state-appointed prosecutor. A group of Ursuline nuns subsequently accused Grandier of improprieties which were put into motion, they claimed, by his otherworldly abilities.Huxley wanted it both ways in “The Devils of Loudun,” juggling historical fact and novelistic license. His Grandier is a man of rapacious appetites, elastic morals and intellectual mendacity, the kind for whom “adrenalin addiction is rationalized as Righteous Indignation and . . . they are convinced, unshakably, that they do well to be angry.” This is how he is played by Oliver Reed and rarely was the barrel-chested actor as intensely in his element. Reed worked with Russell previously, most notably on “Women in Love” (1969), and he’s a force of nature here, likely inspired by a director who shared his love of extremity.As “The Devils” unfolds, Reed’s Grandier becomes less of a scoundrel, if not strictly a man of God. When a hunchbacked nun, Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave), reaches a point of untenable sexual frustration, she accuses Grandier of being in league with the devil. All the while, Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) puts a bee in the bonnet of an oh-so-supercilious King Louis XIII (Graham Armitage), scheming to overthrow Grandier’s dominion and raze the walls of Loudun. An inquisitor, Father Pierre Barre (Michael Gothard), is called in to perform ritual purifications for all and sundry using methods that are, to put it mildly, immoderate.All of which doesn’t do justice for a film whose indulgences are exquisitely choreographed, but whose satiric leanings are leaden and provocations egregious — that is, when they’re flat out stupid. The giveaway isn’t a gallivanting cadre of lascivious nuns, torture played as slapstick or the equating of religion and repulsion — each of which is, admittedly, pretty flagrant. It’s the anachronisms that grate, whether it be Gothard’s rock-’n’-roll exorcist or Reed’s wearing costumery that looks like it was pulled from the racks of a Carnaby Street boutique circa 1966.Not a cent seems to have been spared in Derek Jarman’s production design, and the film’s momentum is unstoppable. But “The Devils” is important primarily as an indicator how the excesses of the 1960s left not enlightenment in its wake, but moral confusion and artistic pretension. New Yorkers curious about the film are recommended to gird their loins and bring an air sickness bag. The rest of us can stay home and be grateful that there are some things that aren’t made as they used to be.

Is ‘The Devils’ Worship Justified?

Is ‘The Devils’ Worship Justified?

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