James Drew offers another slice of cinema from Picturenose’s archive – this week, an exclusive recent interview with legendary boundary-pusher Ken Russell about his most controversial film, 'The Devils', as the clamour grows for a director’s cut DVD release.

An assault on the senses and emotions, Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), is possibly the most controversial and devastating film ever unleashed on mainstream cinema audiences. The director’s cut, with some eight minutes finally restored, received its first international public screenings at the Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film (BIFFF) in 2006. A DVD release was promised for later that year by Warner Bros. So, what’s happened, guys?

When first shown and for many years after, the (much-mangled) film was subjected to almost as much vilification as that inflicted upon Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), the worldly, charismatic priest of Loudun, France, who in 1634 is unjustly accused of witchcraft by a group of sexually obsessed nuns, led by the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave). The situation is ruthlessly exploited by the power-hungry Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) – control of Grandier’s town is all that remains for Richelieu to wrest rule of the country from King Louis XIII. As a result, the devout priest is humiliated and tortured, but refuses to confess. Hell, as the original tagline put it, will hold no surprises for him.

When the predictable howls of outrage, Christian pressure-group vilification and local council bans finally gave way to objective study of the film, a curious (but by no means unique) thing happened… damnation, as exemplified by the critics of the time such as Alan Frank and Philip Bergman, who would seemingly have burnt Russell at a stake fired by all the copies of the film, became near-canonization. Contemporary critics as respected as Repo Man director Alex Cox and Mark Kermode now cite The Devils among their top ten. And it was Kermode who led a lengthy search through Warner Bros’ vaults for a key scene (frenzied nuns ravishing a life-size effigy of Christ on the cross) which was then restored; the subsequent Russell-approved cut was shown at London’s National Film Theatre in 2004, and is the version that will hopefully find its way onto DVD very soon.

JD: But does this turnabout amuse or surprise Russell?

KR: “I suppose it shouldn’t, but it does surprise me up to a point; it’s good to be in the company of those who have made artistic endeavours that are pilloried in their own time but which find acceptance later. And yes, I do find it funny as well. Quite frankly, and without trying to be arrogant, I felt that people would come round to The Devils in time, despite its obviously inflammatory style. What I hope is that people can now see past the subject matter’s intensity to understand the depiction of the political in-fighting that waged unchecked in the name of Christianity at the time and how this could be exploited. It’s Cardinal Richelieu who is the monster.”

To be fair, controversy and Ken have been long-time companions. The director, whose frequently notorious back-catalogue includes The Music Lovers (1969) (Tchaikovsky’s troubled sex life) Women in Love (1969) (accusations of taking D.H. Lawrence liberties) and Gothic (1986) (the creator of Frankenstein was a nympho) is usually offending someone or other with his visions.

JD: So, is controversy really his primary aim as a filmmaker?

KR: “No…I just look to whether the subject matter convinces, in its own right, and whether it cries out for an imaginative interpretation, which I then attempt. To be fair, The Devils was based on meticulous research, first from Aldous Huxley, who wrote The Devils of Loudon, then John Whiting, who wrote a play based on the same material. The daily ‘exorcism’ shows of the ‘possessed nuns’ in the Loudon cathedral were a part of everyday life…historical evidence tells us that this is so. Then there was the controversy over whether the beautiful excesses of Derek Jarman’s designs ‘bled’ into the costumes. Well, as far as the issue of the ‘green lipstick’ is concerned [a garish make-up worn by several of the female characters which was singled out as an historical inaccuracy at the time of the film’s first release] that is absolutely what they wore.”

The Devils is nothing less than a depiction of the Pit; the shocking, deeply disturbing spectacle is made even more morally objectionable by the fact that the film was brilliantly made by Russell. A zesty, meticulously researched and supremely entertaining historical document that is certainly graphic, even in the mangled version that has done the rounds in cinemas and on video since 1971. Yet its true power is independent of blood-letting or sexual content; it is the kind of film that Hieronymus Bosch would have made, had he had access to a movie camera rather than a triptych.

One key figure put his head above the parapet to try to protect the film at the time of its first release; as a last goodwill gesture before his retirement in 1971, the-then Secretary of the British Board of Film Censors, John Trevelyan, (a liberal chap who had a lot of time for Russell’s work) was convinced that The Devils, despite its obvious extremity, could be defended on artistic grounds, given that its subject was that of a priest refusing, despite the most horrifying tortures, to recant his faith.

Trevelyan told Russell privately in 1971 that two sequences would be impossible to pass, even with cuts: the first being the ‘rape of Christ’ set-piece described earlier, and a short sequence involving Sister Jeanne pleasuring herself with a charred thigh bone. These were duly removed before the film was formally submitted to the BBFC, but further cuts of 89 seconds were still requested. Of these, Russell is still sore over the excessive slashing inflicted on one key scene, which unfortunately remains uncorrected in the director’s cut because of lost footage.

KR: “I had to trim, trim and trim this part where Grandier is being tortured with a metal boot, where wedges are being forced in, slowly crushing the man’s foot. There was cut after cut, and the scene that we were left with lost most of its narrative and visual sense. It was a pivotal sequence, it proved the depth of Grandier’s faith, so why?”

JD: Surely, though, it must have been a riot to work on a set where numerous naked women recreating sexual mania, torture and agonizing death were a part of the daily grind?

KR: “No, actually it was stressful, very. I had to put huge demands on my actors – getting the actresses who played the nuns to shave their heads, acting in the nude, losing themselves, and depicting atrocities. I did find that playing cacophonous music through on-set speakers – such as Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel or the works of Shostakovich – helped the cast enormously. Something in the music allowed the less-experienced actors to completely lose themselves, as the script demanded. Vanessa [Redgrave], on the other hand, had no need of that. Given the extremity of what she had to perform, I found that amazing. A complete professional, as was Oliver Reed. All told, the cast was as good as gold.”



Despite his recent foray to an even darker side of ‘entertainment’, with his Big Brother appearance and clash with Jade Goody (remember her?), Russell’s passion for directing shows little sign of abating, even at the ripe age of 80. Russell can count some 50 years behind the camera; after serving in the merchant navy and being a successful freelance photographer, his short films Peepshow (1956) and Amelia and the Angel (1957) won him admission to the BBC, where he made several documentaries for the arts programme Monitor. His Elgar (1962) brought him national attention and the chance to direct his first feature film, French Dressing (1963), a seaside farce starring James Booth and Roy Kinnear. It was the release of Women in Love (1969) that first brought him international acclaim – but it is The Devils that to date remains his artistic and expressive high point. Works such as his highly successful adaptation of Pete Townshend’s rock opera Tommy (1975), Lisztomania (1975), Valentino (1977) followed, with his US-produced Altered States (1980) and Crimes of Passion (1984) demonstrating a broader appeal, but his return to baroque excess with Gothic (1986), The Lair of the White Worm (1988) and, much later, The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2001), seem to show a desire on the director’s part to recapture the visual excesses of his most controversial film.

So, is it his favourite? “Well,” he says, wistfully, “they are all my children, but I do have a special love for The Devils.”

Some may consider it to be the sort of child that only a father could love; others may well be ecstatic at the prospect of the most unforgiving vision of hell on earth screaming at them for, thankfully, 111 minutes as opposed to 103. The resurrection of The Devils , should it ever happen, is sure to bring a divided reaction – exactly, one must assume, what Ken is hoping for.

James Drew

(expatica, picturenose.com 2008)

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