ON THE TENTH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I watched The Devils (1971) by Ken Russell. Its narrative is based on real events in the life of Urbain Grandier, a 17th century priest who was persecuted, tortured, and burned at the stake after pissing off Cardinal Richelieu for supporting the independence of Loudun. Really though, the history here is just a pretext for Russell to stage an incredibly theatrical production, filled with nude nun orgies, forced enemas, mass graves for plague victims, and lots of overwrought period dialog. It’s no surprise that Russell would go on to direct psychedelic musicals, including an adaptation of The Who’s rock opera Tommy, since that’s essentially what this is (without the singing). It seems like Russell started out with a desire to fuse the profane and the sacred, and sex and death, as a collective experience of hysteria that would swallow up the audience, and he subsequently found something that would allow him to do that (that something being The Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley, which Russell adapted for the screenplay).
It does have some harrowing scenes of horror, but at least as many scenes are devoted to celebrations of erotic hedonism, wherein the pagan spirit breaks through and triumphs over Christian repression in the church’s own innermost sanctums. I suppose some people might find the latter horrific (scandalized audiences at the time certainly did), but I just found these scenes to be fun and happy. That’s about all I got out of it. My only complaint, or not so much a complaint as a point of bemusement, is that Grandier is played by Oliver Reed, i.e. the most ridiculously full-of-himself actor who ever lived. He makes William Shatner look understated and restrained.
No comments:
Post a Comment