Mother Joan of the Angels

Jerzy Kawalerowicz – 1961 – Poland

This stark and harrowing film is based on the same incident of alleged demonic possession in a 17th century French nunnery as Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun and Ken Russell’s film The Devils, except that it covers the brief period after the events in those works.  Father Josef Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) is sent to look after a group of cloistered nuns who have recently sent another priest to his death at the stake with their tales of his heresy.  Suryn is much like the titular heroes of Luis Buñuel’s Nazarin or Simon of the Desert; entirely sincere in his Christian charity, and so he guilelessly accepts the claims and outrageous behaviors of Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnicka) and undertakes to find a way to heal her.  Several exorcisms fail and point out to nearly everyone except Suryn that Joan is merely a sexually frustrated woman itching for attention.  Ultimately, Suryn decides on a course that implies he may have contracted some of the nuns’ insanity by osmosis.  It’s not dissimilar from what the priest in The Exorcist will do to rescue the possessed girl in that film, except here there is no demon, only the self-destructive hysteria of frightened, sheltered and superstitious people.