Bold, brutal, blasphemous, and utterly brilliant, Ken Russell's The Devils is easily one of the most unjustly overlooked films of its time, surely due in no small part to its limited availability. Taking place in 1634, the film explores the unconscionable atrocities committed by the Catholic church in the seventeenth century, especially in regard to social and sexual politics.
As Urbain Grandier, a French priest whose interpretation of the clergy allows for sexual daliance, Oliver Reed gives one of the most underrated performances of the '70s. He is galvanizing: powerful, charismatic, and sympathetic. Even his questionable actions and beliefs are rendered understandable, if not likable, by his charm and presence in the role. "Saint Paul says that he who marries does a good thing," Grandier is admonished, "but he who remains chaste does something better," to which he simply responds, "Then I am content to do a good thing, and leave the best to those that can face it."
Vanessa Redgrave, in one of her earlier performances, is also superb as Sister Jeanne, the head nun whose obsession with Grandier is the impetus for the rampant sexuality that overtakes the convent and, subsequently, the Cardinal's takeover of Loudon. That hers is not the most memorable performance is not a criticism of her, but rather a compliment to the entire cast; rarely has Russell assembled a troupe of actors who get his twisted blend of history, satire, and surrealism as well as he has here.
And what a unique blend it is. The film is joyfully anachronistic, with sets admittedly modelled less after Victorian architecture than after Fritz Lang's Metropolis. (And by Derek Jarman, no less.) Russell's pageantry is not of the stuffy variety one usually expects of a period piece; instead, his brilliant screenplay comes to vivid life with the kind of absurd theatricality to which only 1971 could give birth. Everything about the film is bold: its colors, its sets, its costumes, its performances, they all jump off of the screen with a brazen confidence that defies you to turn away, knowing well that you won't, in spite of your outrage at what you're seeing.
This is marvelously subversive cinema, a film with ideas and the conviction to deliver them as fearlessly and as confrontationally as possible. The Devils is less cautionary than A Clockwork Orange, less willfully obtuse than The Holy Mountain, and less obstinately grotesque than Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom; yet it stands easily alongside these classics and paints, along with them, a picture of a disquieted generation learned enough to understand its place within a greater context yet determined to fight oppression in all its forms. If ever there was a film absolutely begging to be brought back into the spotlight by the Criterion Collection, The Devils is that film.