Directed by Ken Russell Written by Ken Russell, John Whiting, Aldous Huxley (novel)
Starring Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Dudley Sutton
How do you make a deeply and angrily political film, using a broadly true story of a sex-and-demons scandal in seventeenth century France, with enough power to strongly influence viewers, and still persuade a major studio to support it all the way? Well, perhaps you don't. Certainly, if you're making it in 1971, you're going to have a spot of bother - which is why the BFI's new dvd release of The Devils is, after four decades, the closest we're likely to get to the film that the late Ken Russell wanted us to see.
It goes without saying that the loss for so long of the film in an unbutchered form is a great shame, not just because it's a hugely powerful and expressive picture - it is - but because the movie has so much to say, all of which was buried beneath the controversy for many years. And it's worth addressing this controversy, the extremity of the movie: yes, it's a difficult watch, confusing and aggressive and - by the standards of the early 1970s, although not today, not in our much-changed world - decidedly graphic. Extremity for a reason, though, bombarding the viewer, confusing and grabbing the viewer, to give all the more impact to the message.
The message is important, too. Very important, in 1971 as in 2012. The movie tells of the very real 'craze' for identifying witchcraft and demonic possession across Europe at the height of the counter-reformation, and the exploitation of this mass panic and - for want of a better word - witchhunt to empower Cardinal Richelieu and the French regime. Set in Loudun, a wealthy and rebellious city, resisting central rule but protected behind vast and unbreachable walls, we see the henchmen of Richelieu creating an uproar, a desperate and insane fear of demons, to bring down the leader of the city, and the city's defences with him. Those henchmen, and Richelieu himself, are surrounded by odd hints of modernity - twentieth century glasses, steel chairs, a headquarters laid out like a prison of today - and we can discern in them a reflection of authority in the director's own time. Where fear and desperation and ignorance are exploited to control the masses, we see a panic motivated by tales of demonic possession - but we can also see, between the lines, a panic motivated by tales of reds under the bed, Communist infiltration, unAmerican activities.
Can we not also see, in 2012, just the same fear of 'terrorism'? Can we not also see governments preying on the scared and ignorant, claiming to drive out evil forces that move among us, but acting only to take away our rights and our liberties? As Oliver Reed's wrongfully accused priest cries
Look at your city! If your city is destroyed, your freedom is destroyed also... If you would remain free men, fight. Fight them or become their slaves!while the people of the city, screaming and demented, stare at his execution and not at the walls coming down behind them, so any one of us could turn and see the ramparts of our rights being pulled apart, if only we could draw our eyes away from the witchhunts and the madness being played out for our amusement.
In a week that has seen the British government propose ever deeper attacks on our freedom in the name of 'defeating terrorism and organised crime', the fullest ever release of The Devils couldn't be more timely.
