THE DEVILS (1971) — A masterpiece resurrected

“Call me vain and proud, the greatest sinner ever to walk God's earth, but Satan's boy I could never be. I haven't the humility.”

More than half a century after it first shocked audiences, Ken Russell's 1971 horror-drama THE DEVILS has returned to theaters in a stunning 4K restoration, courtesy of Warner Bros.' newly established preservation arm, Clockwork.

The famously controversial film, which has spent decades languishing in obscurity without a widely available official home-media or streaming release, is now receiving a limited theatrical engagement. For generations of film enthusiasts who have known Russell's masterpiece largely through its reputation, bootlegs and compromised versions, this restoration is nothing short of a historic occasion.

And what an occasion it is.

Depraved, gorgeous, confrontational and timelier than ever, THE DEVILS is one of the most extraordinary films ever committed to celluloid. It is also one of the most profoundly misunderstood.

Based on Aldous Huxley's 1952 book The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting's subsequent stage adaptation, Russell's film dramatizes the infamous Loudun possessions of 1634, a real-life episode of religious hysteria in which a community of Ursuline nuns claimed to be possessed by demons. Their accusations eventually centered on a local Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier, who was condemned and burned alive.

Russell transforms this historical nightmare into a feverish examination of religious fanaticism, political corruption, sexual repression and the terrifying ease with which faith can be manipulated into an instrument of oppression.

The film stars the rugged, magnetic Oliver Reed as Father Grandier, a hedonistic but nonetheless devout priest, and the extraordinary Vanessa Redgrave as Sister Jeanne des Anges, a physically disabled and sexually repressed nun whose obsession with Grandier sets the tragedy in motion.

Much has been written about the film's shocking imagery, including its depictions of sexual frenzy among the nuns, the desecration of religious imagery and the brutal humiliation and abuse inflicted during a harrowing exorcism.

These sequences have haunted the film's reputation for more than 50 years, often overshadowing what Russell is actually trying to say.

Because THE DEVILS is not, as its detractors have long argued, an attack on Christianity.

Quite the opposite.

It is a film about the corruption of faith by those who find religion useful only insofar as it advances their own ambitions. It is about the distance between believing in God and believing oneself entitled to speak for Him.

And it is about how quickly the institutions meant to offer salvation can become instruments of cruelty when placed in the wrong hands.

At the center of this moral catastrophe stands Grandier, one of cinema's most fascinating contradictions.

He is a priest, certainly, but hardly a conventional one. Grandier drinks deeply from life's pleasures, pursues romantic relationships and openly challenges the expectation that a man of the cloth must deny himself companionship and physical intimacy.

He argues that Scripture itself recognizes man's need for love and connection, questioning the notion that celibacy is an essential expression of devotion.

Grandier is arrogant, vain and frequently hypocritical. He is also deeply compassionate, fiercely intelligent and unwavering in his belief in God.

As the spiritual leader of Loudun, he takes seriously his responsibility to defend the city's people and preserve its independence. He is equally horrified by the barbaric medical experimentation being inflicted upon plague victims under the guise of treatment.

For those of us who consider ourselves religious, Grandier is perhaps more relatable than the countless immaculate saints and martyrs that populate religious cinema.

He believes in God. He believes in the Church. He believes in right and wrong, and he longs for the day when he will stand before his Creator.

But he is also a sinner.

A deeply flawed man, certainly, but one whose imperfections do not negate his faith or his capacity for goodness.

Russell understands something that religious zealots so often refuse to acknowledge: Faith does not make us perfect. Nor does imperfection make us faithless.

Grandier's greatest virtue is not that he lives without sin, but that he refuses to surrender his conscience to those who claim divine authority while committing unspeakable evil.

Redgrave's Sister Jeanne, meanwhile, represents another side of that same religious paradox.

A hunchbacked nun consumed by sexual repression, shame and self-loathing, Jeanne is initially presented as a grotesque embodiment of Catholic guilt. Her fantasies about Grandier, a man she has never actually met, become an obsession that she cannot reconcile with her vows.

Yet Russell refuses to make her a one-dimensional villain.

Jeanne is, in many ways, a product of the institution that has shaped her. Her physical appearance has subjected her to rejection and humiliation, while the convent has offered her a place in society that otherwise might have denied her one.

When Madeleine, Grandier's eventual lover, approaches Jeanne about entering the sisterhood, she does so with an idealistic understanding of religious life. She assumes that the women who have devoted themselves to the convent are there because of their overwhelming love for God.

Jeanne quickly disabuses her of that notion.

Many of the women, she explains, entered religious life not out of spiritual conviction, but because their families could not afford dowries or considered them unsuitable for marriage.

The convent, supposedly a sanctuary of divine love, has become a convenient repository for women society has deemed undesirable.

As Jeanne bitterly observes, communities that should burn with devotion have instead become places of spiritual emptiness and resignation.

It is one of the film's most devastating observations, and it establishes the conflict that runs through everything that follows: the difference between genuine faith and the convenient performance of it.

Jeanne's obsession with Grandier eventually reaches a breaking point when she attempts to confess her fantasies to Father-Canon Mignon, played by Murray Melvin.

Confronted with the supposed wickedness of her desires, Jeanne seeks refuge in an accusation. Her lustful thoughts, she claims, are not her own. They have been planted in her mind by Grandier, whom she identifies as an agent of the Devil.

What begins as an act of desperation soon becomes the perfect opportunity for a political conspiracy.

Loudun is a walled city whose relative independence has become an inconvenience to the French monarchy. Its population includes Catholics sympathetic to the Protestant minority, and its defenses represent an obstacle to the centralization of royal power.

Cardinal Richelieu and the court of King Louis XIII see Grandier's growing scandal as an opportunity to eliminate the city's most influential defender and bring Loudun firmly under royal control.

Enter Father Pierre Barre.

Played with mesmerizing, almost supernatural intensity by Michael Gothard, Barre is an inquisitor whose religious fervor has curdled into something monstrous.

He arrives ostensibly to investigate the allegations of demonic possession, but his true purpose is to manufacture the evidence necessary to destroy Grandier.

Barre does not merely encourage the nuns' hysteria. He cultivates it, exploits it and transforms it into a grotesque public spectacle.

Under his direction, the supposed exorcisms become increasingly sadistic, with religious authority serving as justification for humiliation, sexual violence and torture.

Every atrocity is committed in God's name.

But God has precious little to do with any of it.

These are the ambitions of men seeking power, dressed in the language and ceremony of divine righteousness.

And that, I believe, is the true horror of THE DEVILS.

Russell demonstrates how something as profoundly unifying as faith can be weaponized against the very people it is supposed to protect. How easily religious conviction can be replaced by obedience, compassion by cruelty and spiritual leadership by political expediency.

It is difficult to watch these sequences without recognizing their echoes in our own world.

We have seen, time and again, how religious institutions and their leaders can be exploited to advance political agendas, silence dissent and convince ordinary people that cruelty is not merely permissible, but righteous.

Russell does not condemn organized religion itself. He condemns those who exploit its authority, who wield God's name as a weapon and who spread fear and hatred with a destructive force rivaling the plague ravaging Loudun.

The distinction is essential.

For all its blasphemous imagery and stomach-churning excess, THE DEVILS is, at its core, a deeply moral film.

And then there is the sheer beauty of the thing.

Russell's vision of 17th-century France is unlike anything else in cinema, with enormous, strikingly modern architectural spaces, elaborate costumes and compositions that alternate between the sublime and the nightmarish.

The extraordinary production design, the vivid colors and the almost overwhelming theatricality of the performances create a world that feels both centuries removed from our own and frighteningly contemporary.

The 4K restoration allows these elements to sing with a clarity and richness that make the film feel astonishingly alive.

There are images here so meticulously constructed, so visually arresting, that I found myself wondering how a film more than half a century old could make so much contemporary cinema look positively pedestrian.

Reed is magnificent, balancing Grandier's arrogance and sensuality with a growing spiritual conviction that becomes increasingly moving as his fate approaches.

Redgrave, meanwhile, gives a performance of almost unbearable psychological intensity. Her Jeanne is repulsive, pitiable, frightening and tragic, sometimes within the span of a single scene.

And Gothard's Barre is one of the most terrifying villains in film history precisely because he is so utterly convinced of his own righteousness.

These performances, combined with Russell's uncompromising direction, create something that transcends the boundaries of conventional historical drama or horror.

THE DEVILS is an experience.

I was fortunate enough to see the restoration in Wichita, at a screening attended by roughly 20 other moviegoers.

There was something profoundly moving about sitting in that theater, surrounded by strangers, watching a film that has spent more than five decades fighting to be seen.

Here was a movie made in 1971, controversial from the moment of its release, still capable of holding an audience completely captive in 2026.

For all the technological advancements of modern cinema, all the elaborate computer-generated spectacles and increasingly expensive blockbusters, there remains something almost miraculous about the power of a singular artistic vision.

Russell made a film that refused to compromise, refused to comfort and refused to apologize for the questions it demanded audiences confront.

More than 50 years later, those questions have lost none of their urgency.

I hope Warner Bros. eventually makes this restoration widely available on physical media, allowing future generations to experience the film without the barriers that have kept it inaccessible for so long.

But I would urge anyone with the opportunity to see THE DEVILS theatrically to do so.

Some films are worth preserving because of their historical importance. Others because of their artistic achievement.

THE DEVILS deserves preservation for both reasons, but also because it reminds us of what cinema can accomplish when filmmakers are allowed to confront the darkest aspects of humanity without fear of offending those who would rather look away.

It is grotesque and gorgeous, blasphemous and profoundly spiritual, horrifying and, in its own strange way, faith-affirming.

A masterpiece, in every sense of the word.

And sitting in that Wichita theater, watching Grandier's struggle unfold before an audience still enthralled by Russell's vision, I was reminded why I love movies in the first place.

It was an armrest-gripping, stomach-churning, soul-stirring experience I will never forget.

More than half a century later, THE DEVILS has risen again. And God help us, it has never felt more relevant.