Miss Redgrave in Role of Sister Jeanne
By VINCENT CANBY
Published: July 17, 1971
Ken Russell's "The Devils," an adaptation of Aldous Huxley's "The Devils of Loudun," and of the play that John Whiting based on the Huxley book, is a movie that carries its head (and its mind) tucked underneath its arm. It's a see-through movie composed of a lot of clanking, silly, melodramatic effects that, like rib-tickling, exhaust you without providing particular pleasure, to say nothing of enlightenment.
"The Devils," in fact, is of so little substance, obscene or otherwise, that I can only believe that the men and women of the Motion Picture Association, who rated the film "X," must be in league with Beelzebub, or with Warner Brothers, the selfdescribed "Kinney leisure company" that financed the film. It just may be that there's still enough mystery in an X rating to make "The Devils" more popular than it has any right to be.
In 1634, in Loudun, France, Father Urban Grandier, a handsome, sophisticated lay priest, who had been educated by the Jesuits, was convicted of witchcraft, largely on the hysterical testimony of a small group of Ursuline nuns, and burned at the stake, with the approval of Cardinal Richelieu, whose belief in witches was not noticeably great.
Father Grandier was guilty of a number of cardinal outrages (among other things, he had married himself to Loudun's most virtuous heiress in front of his own altar), but his execution, as Huxley carefully detailed, was a badly disguised political act. It was a small, tragic skirmish in Richelieu's much larger campaign to reduce the power of the feudal towns, thereby to assure the absolute authority of the King, Louis XIII, and, through the King, the absolute authority of Richelieu.
Although I rather liked Russell's adaptation of "Women in Love," I was appalled by "The Music Lovers," and thus I can't explain why I should have been surprised to find his approach to "The Devils" to be that of a hobbyist determined to reproduce "The Last Supper" in bottle tops. Russell, as writer and director, has simplified and reduced the complexity of the drama to the dimensions of that most boring kind of Pop art, which tries to forestall criticism by making fun of itself.
How else to explain a sequence in which Richelieu attempts to lecture the King on the historical necessities of power, while the King busies himself taking pot snots at Huguenots who run across his lawn dressed in bird costumes? "Bye, bye, blackbird," says the king as one uncredited extra explodes in a puff of feathers. It's not the fantasy that is objectionable, but the quality of the imagination behind it.
A movie that opens with Louis XIII dressed as Botticelli's Venus, emerging from a half shell in a court tableau (to throw Tiny Tim kisses to his audience), is obviously a movie less interested in coherent thought than in spectacle. This includes crucifixion fantasies, in which Sister Jeanne of the Angels, Grandier's chief accuser, sees herself licking the blood off Christ's (Grandier's) hands, exorcism by enema, tortures, vomiting, and the final immolation.
"The Devils" is so concerned with the "look" of these experiences that it ultimately diminishes their meaning, and, in turn, the meaning of the lives of the people who lived them.
In view of this, I suppose it's no special wonder that most of the performers behave like figures in an animated wax-works. When the screenplay allows, Oliver Reed suggests some recognizable humanity as poor Father Grandier, but everyone else is ridiculous. Vanessa Redgrave, who can be, I think, a fine actress, plays Sister Jeanne with a plastic hump, a Hansel-and-Gretel giggle, and so much sibilance that when she says "Satan is ever ready to seduce us with sensual delights," you might think that Groucho Marx had let the air out of her tires.
The Cast
THE DEVILS, directed by Ken Russell; screenplay by Mr. Russell, based on the play "The Devils" by John Whiting and the book "The Devils of Loudun" by Aldous Huxley; director of photography, David Watkins; music by Peter Maxwell Davies; produced by Robert H. Solo and Mr. Russell; released by Warner Brothers. At the Fine Arts Theater, 58th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. Running time: 109 minutes. (The Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code and Rating Administration classifies this film: "X—no one under 17 admitted.")
Sister Jeanne . . . . . Vanessa Redgrave
Father Grandier . . . . . Oliver Reed
De Laubardemont . . . . . Dudley Sutton
Ibert . . . . . Max Adrian
Madeleine . . . . . Gemma Jones
Mignon . . . . . Murray Melvin
Father Barre . . . . . Michael Gothard
Philippe . . . . . Georgina Hale
Adam . . . . . Brian Murphy
Cardinal Richelieu . . . . . Christopher Logue
Louis XIII . . . . . Graham Armitage
Trincant . . . . . John Woodvine
Published: --, The New York Times Historical newspaper , Section , Column , Page