The Devils

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B P @Bradster69 1 day ago Definitely Recommend It See more Chris S @Janomi 3 days ago The Devils has powerful elements, but it is hard to fully recommend because Ken Russell often prioritizes provocation and visual extremity over story. Russell’s style is the film’s identity, but there are moments where the imagery, cruelty, and sexual hysteria nearly swallow the human drama. Oliver Reed gives the movie its strongest center as Grandier. He plays him as arrogant, sensual, intelligent, flawed, and ultimately tragic. Grandier is not a saint, but Reed gives him enough strength and dignity that his downfall carries real weight when the machinery of power turns against him. The production design is incredible in a cold, surreal, nightmarish way. The white-walled city, stark interiors, costumes, religious imagery, and bizarre compositions make it feel like a fever dream about corruption and fanaticism. The Devils is fearless and confrontational, but it is also abrasive, ugly, and exhausting. I doubt I'll ever rewatch it. See more John F @RT84127024 Sep 28, 2026 Takes a bit to get going and its treatment of women in positions of power is perhaps questionable, but the final act is riveting and its message of corruption is both timely and timeless. See more Steven C @Fels41 Aug 16, 2026 Underrated. Which is probably due to what some may view as excessiveness in some areas. The film highlights how religiosity can be exploited to advance a political agenda and how easily the strings of a dispassionate and indifferent king are pulled despite seemingly being intellectually equipped to sniff out the rouse. It’s a train wreck you see coming yet can only watch in horror. See more DanTheMan 2 @DanTheMan2150AD Oct 12, 2025 A literal orgy of splendour. Ken Russell's controversial tour de force, The Devils, stands as a profound and sincere commentary on religious hysteria, political persecution and the corrupt marriage of church and state. It is like a lunatic opera, an attempt to make a furious poem out of frenzy. An experience that pulsates and perverts, especially in those glorious moments when Russell slaps the sacred directly in its frescoed face, even while preaching their rhetoric of sin and salvation, nuns, priests, and cardinals are only human, and humans are nothing but animals. It's easy to be swept away by the film's crass vulgarity, utilising its confrontational tone to delve deep beneath the surface of normalised and accepted institutions of abuse and oppression. Nothing is safe: not God, not Satan, not man, not their collective meaning. Russell's direction is bold, brilliant, grimly stylish and stuffed to the gills with inspired visuals and intense framing, both provocative and persuasive in its contention that the greatest blasphemy is the leveraging of faith for power. The set design by Derek Jarman is just exquisite; his vision of Loudun is one of radiant whiteness, with every building covered in pristine tiles, which ironically makes them much easier to defile and destroy. Oliver Reed gives one of his finest performances as the turbulent priest Urbain Grandier, a man who, although not remotely saintly, is nonetheless so consistent in his religious and political convictions that he favours torture and death over compromise. He is well matched by Vanessa Redgrave's hunchbacked Sister Jeanne, whose erotic obsession with him fuels the hysterical fervour that ends up sweeping the entire convent. Another memorable creative contribution is the sublimely dissonant score by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, a cacophony of jarring dissonance that perfectly matches Russell's depiction of the breakdown of civilisation. It's made all the more impressive when you learn that this is the only film he scored. One day, perhaps the unedited version of The Devils will reveal itself; until then, even Russell's compromised vision retains its power to shock and disturb. It's a film of beauty, horror, and rage. It has heart and humanity. Even today, maybe more than ever, it's a portrait of hypocrisy and societal madness that remains painfully pertinent. See more John W @RT94500145 Jun 6, 2025 The Devis is rich and visually stunning. It is one of Oliver Reeds best films, in my opinion. He is superbly directed by Ken Russel, who even outdoes himself on this one. Ok, some of the scenes are a bit over the top, but that is in keeping with the historical setting of the film, being at a very violent period in France at the time. It is also uniquely terrifying and extremely realistic. It depicts a really atrocious state of human nature, when ruthlessness and mental illness conspire to bring down an essentially flawed but mostly ‘decent’ man. See more Read all reviews

The Devils

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