The Devils (1971) on Netflix
X19711h 51mBiographyDramaHistory
In 1634 Loudun, Sister Jeanne, who leads a convent, is sexually obsessed with the town's priest, Urbain Grandier. Her claim of witchcraft gives church and state officials their case against him.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.7/1021,881 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
Cardinal Richelieu pushes King Louis XIII to demolish town fortifications across France so that Protestants cannot rise up. Louis agrees, yet keeps a promise to Loudun's governor and spares that town. The governor dies, and control of Loudun falls to Urbain Grandier. He keeps a lover, a relative of Canon Jean Mignon, and is unaware that Sister Jeanne, the hunchbacked head of the Ursuline convent, is fixated on him. She asks that he hear the nuns' confessions. He instead marries Madeleine De Brou in secret, and word of the marriage reaches her. Baron Jean de Laubardemont then arrives with orders to pull down the town's walls; Grandier calls out the soldiers and forces him to wait for the king's own order. Grandier leaves to visit Louis, and Mignon becomes Jeanne's confessor.
Cast
- Christopher Logueas Cardinal Richelieu
- Graham Armitageas Louis XIII
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Devils (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The most significant cuts were made by Warner Bros. before the film was submitted to the BBFC: two scenes went entirely, including a two-and-a-half-minute sequence of naked nuns sexually defiling a statue of Christ while Father Mignon looks down on the scene and masturbates.
- United Artists announced the film in August 1969 with Russell directing and shooting set for May 1970, but after executives read the screenplay they 'refused to touch it' and abandoned the production, by which time Derek Jarman had already built some of the sets.
- Glenda Jackson, who had starred in Russell's Women in Love and The Music Lovers, turned down Sister Jeanne des Anges with 'I don't want to play any more neurotic sex starved parts'; Russell felt she really refused because the part had been truncated, and Vanessa Redgrave replaced her.
- Despite the BBFC approving the 111-minute British theatrical cut with an X certificate barring under-18s, the film was banned outright by 17 local councils across Britain.
- The Devils marked Jarman's debut in the film industry after a career in theater; his set for Loudun took three months to design and was the largest built on Pinewood's backlot since Cleopatra in 1963.
- In 2014 Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro publicly criticized Warner Bros. for censoring the film and limiting its home video availability; the #FreeTheDevils campaign begun that year drew support from del Toro, Neil Gaiman, Lloyd Kaufman and Mark Kermode.
- Russell and Reed clashed so often during the shoot that by the time principal photography had finished the two were hardly on speaking terms.
