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Sympathy for The Devils: The Suppression of Ken Russell’s Delirious, Incomparable Masterpiece

Despite the pronounced pedigree of its origins, Ken Russell’s glorious 1971 film The Devils is still mysteriously unavailable in the United States. An infamously plagued reception continues to usurp deserved attention away from its subversive content, though a growing legion of champions within the critical arena which had once sacrilegiously abandoned it has resulted in its growing recuperation.

Based, very loosely on a 1952 novel by literary giant Aldous Huxley depicting the downfall of 17th century French priest Urbain Grandier, it relates an incidence of hysteria and mob mentality run amok in the totalitarian paradigm of the Catholic Church. Russell, his project backed by none other than Warner Bros. studio itself, crafted an off-putting extravaganza of a film (shall we say, making Huxley’s text more Grandier) depicting events decried as pure blasphemy.

Wit unabashedly blunt sexual...

★★★★☆ For his sixth feature, renowned Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz decided to board the Night Train (1959), inspired by his frequent trips to woo actress Lucyna Winnicka. She would star in the resulting thriller which was to prove no mere potboiler, but instead the chance to put his characters in an intense pressure cooker of tension. With his country having emerged from a period of cultural Stalinism, Kawalerowicz and screenwriter Jerzy Lutowski used generic motifs to place a cross-section of Polish society aboard the titular train together and psychologically examine them within the confines of one particular sleeping carriage.

Mother Joan of the Angels

Written by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz, Tadeusz Konwicki, and Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Poland, 1961

Tales of possession run deep through any religious or formerly religious society. They may act as a primitive explanation for madness, a cultural example of the physical manifestation of evil, or, on some occasions, a political tool. Though the horror of these events comes in accounts early enough to be placed in the Old Testament, there exists an intellectual horror of possession that pervades the modern world. Though not explicitly speaking of possession, René Descartes hypothesized an omnipotent “evil demon” thought experiment that may help with our idea of the “self”. The idea goes that this demon may be altering the physical world around us, such that our bodies, our environment, all our sensations, as well as the fundamentals of logic and mathematics may simply be an illusion. Whatever is left,...

★★★☆☆ Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) is perhaps a film you watch because you feel you should. Like reading Dickens, if your passion is for books, or visiting the Tate Modern if it's art, Kawalerowicz's cult work is pre-requisite, though not necessarily easy viewing for fans of cinema. This depiction of demonic possession in a 17th century Polish convent, starring Lucyna Winnicka in the titular role with support from Mieczyslaw Voit and Anna Ciepielewska, remains a visually stunning exercise of startling cinematic imagery.

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