Summary
Ken Russell’s bold and visually dazzling film comes back to cinemas after more than 50 years of censorship – and it’s not a moment too soon.
That Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 film The Devils, which fiercely criticises the weaponisation of religious fanaticism by corrupt regimes, has hit so hard with audiences in 2026 speaks volumes.
For decades, the film has been censored or outright banned in many countries, thanks largely to the so-called “rape of Christ” sequences. This fully restored version recaptures the ferocity of its debut over half a century ago, thanks to a new remaster courtesy of the Warner Bros. Clockwork label.
Based on events in 17th-century France, and adapted from Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting’s play, the film focuses on Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), a charismatic priest who defies Cardinal Richelieu’s forces to protect his city. After Grandier secretly marries a woman he has fallen in love with, his enemies seize on the accusations of the sexually repressed and obsessed Mother Superior Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) to have him falsely convicted of witchcraft.
The opening frames – in which production designer Derek Jarman and costume designer Shirley Russell bring Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus to life, with King Louis XIII (played by Graham Armitage) in drag – are a reminder that The Devils remains one of the most visually striking films in Ken Russell’s oeuvre. Jarman’s fortified Loudun looks like an Escher nightmare, its futuristic geometry visually matched only by the clean white subway tiles of the claustrophobic convent walls, all backed by Peter Maxwell Davies’ discordant score.
Russell contrasts these clean, almost clinical lines with explosions of alternately sensual and macabre theatre. At one end, there’s Sister Jeanne’s fantasies of Grandier stepping off the cross as a figure of desire, or a perpetually sweaty Reed in post-coital trysts. But the most infamous of these is the aforementioned orgiastic display of naked nuns writing in fanatical ecstasy and humping a statue of a crucified Jesus. It might be another example of ’70s exploitation cinema, but in Russell’s hands, it’s used to juxtapose institutional hypocrisy (and the bursting of sexual repression) with Grandier’s newfound peace and moral certainty.
Reed plays Grandier as a total cad, initially using his office to satisfy his own sexual desires. (In another time or place, you can totally see Matt Berry playing him for laughs.) Yet he’s also set up as an object of desire, thanks to his bare-chested presence. Redgrave brings an unnerving energy to the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne des Anges, her head perpetually tilted and her creepy cackles coming at odd times.
The Devils is simultaneously a film that is wholly of its time and place, revelling in its excesses and taking bold stylistic swings. Yet with its critical examination of authoritarian power, using extreme theatre to wear down opposition and brainwash the masses, it may have returned at just the right time.
1971 | UK, USA | DIRECTOR: Ken Russell | WRITERS: Ken Russell | CAST: Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Christopher Logue, Michael Gothard | DISTRIBUTOR: Warner Bros., Universal Pictures (Australia) | RUNNING TIME: 115 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 16 July 1971 (first release), 30 October 2026 (Australian re-release)