What can be said about The
Devils that hasn’t already been said?
I have nothing substantial to add; only my personal feeling. For me it’s one of those few films that –
despite being thrilling to me while it’s going – are depressing reminders of how
miserably cinema has fallen in the past few decades. There are no films as strong today that I’m
aware of; nothing that combines aesthetic beauty, visceral drama and horror,
confident direction, and timeless relevance in the way that The Devils does. It is angry and poetic at the same time. Over 40 years after it was made, it is still
the final word on religious hysteria and how it is used by shrewd operators for
political gain. So far, I’ve seen three
different versions; a pan-and-scan VHS copy many years ago, a so-called
“extended” bootleg version that also spoils Russell’s sublime compositions for the
2.35:1 frame with cropping for square TVs, and finally a (presumably
unauthorized) widescreen DVD manufactured in Korea. This latter version – (which, despite its
censoring of some notoriously profane moments, works perfectly well) – is the
only one of the three that I’d recommend until a proper release occurs. Yes, believe it or not, this masterpiece is
still so controversial that those who own the rights to it seem to have no
intention of allowing it to be restored for an official home video
release. What an amazing year of
hullabaloo 1971 was in British film; there was not only Russell’s The Devils, but Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, Polanski’s Macbeth and of course Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, masterworks all, and
all of which sparked media firestorms over sex, violence and blasphemy in
movies. My favorite bit of trivia about
the film is that it won the Best Director award at the Venice Film Festival
even though it couldn’t even be legally shown in Italy ,
which was one of many countries to ban it.
(By the way, check out Jerzy Kowalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels, 1961, which is a sequel to the true
events described in The Devils).
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