The Devils

One of the most controversial films in the history of world cinema returns in an uncensored and digitally restored version. Ken Russell’s The Devils is a baroque, extravagant, and deliberately hammy attempt to tackle the historical event known as the “Loudun Possessions” which Aldous Huxley described in his 1952 book “The Devils of Loudun" in 1952, and which Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz interpreted in his 1944 short story The Devil and the Nun (later adapted into a film by Jerzy Kawalerowicz in 1960).

Ken Russell—who identified as a devout Catholic yet filled his films with sexual excess that repeatedly tested the patience of censors—described The Devil and the Nun as a “deeply unchristian” film and set out to make his own version, which serves as a sort of prequel to Kawalerowicz’s film and focuses on the physical and spiritual struggle between Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) and the prioress of the possessed Ursuline convent, Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave).

Filmed as a frenetic symphony of dynamic colors and ceaseless movement by the outstanding cinematographer David Watkin, Ken Russell’s cinematic treatise is both sensual and philosophical —one that takes religion seriously and throws down the gauntlet to both secular modernity and the dogmatic past. Another visionary of British cinema—namely Derek Jarman—was responsible for the film’s set design, which boldly blends medieval and modernist iconography.

The post-screening discussion will be moderated by Michał Oleszczyk (Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw)

[Michał Oleszczyk]