The Devils

Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils remains one of cinema’s most transgressive and incendiary provocations, a feverish account of the Loudun possessions witchcraft trial in 17th-century France. Oliver Reed stars as Urbain Grandier, a wildly charismatic libertine priest who defies Cardinal Richelieu’s consolidation of power. Vanessa Redgrave’s Sister Jeanne is a sexually repressed, hunchbacked Abbess obsessed with Grandier with an intensity that ignites accusations of demonic possession among her convent’s nuns. Already a target for reprisals due to his political resistance, Grandier’s promiscuity eventually lands him on the wrong side of a powerful family.