Ken Russell
I Diavoli

In the long list of films that will never be shown on television, I recommend watching one of the most extreme: "The Devils" by English director Ken Russell, also mentioning that accounts tell of a journalist from "L'Avvenire", tasked with writing a review when it first hit theaters (1970), who was fired by the Catholic newspaper because, evidently in too personal a manner and not respecting editorial guidelines, he dared to speak well of the work in question.

As you may have guessed, "The Devils", which featured actors of the caliber of Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, was strongly disliked by the Catholic Church and, for this reason, opposed by it and wide sectors of public opinion, as well as being snubbed by critics of the time.

Adjectives for this film could indeed be numerous: the first that come to mind are "violent", "excessive", "exaggerated", "grotesque", "disturbing", "paradoxical".

In short, folks, a true masterpiece that simply has the merit of telling a true story in the best possible way, that is, trying to adhere as much as possible to the historical and documented reality of the facts.

Everyone knows how the Catholic Church stained itself in the more or less recent past with all sorts of crimes and atrocities, torturing those it defined as heretics (actually, political opponents), burning thousands of women in public squares out of fear of the female gender or mere superstition, how it was thirsty for political and economic power, which it imposed on its subjects in the form of spiritual power, using the weapons of excommunication and interdiction, how corrupt, obtusely ignorant, and infinitely more sinful it was than those it was supposed to redeem.

All this is skillfully narrated by Ken Russell in his cinematic opus, through a series of strong and grotesque scenes simultaneously.

The merit of "The Devils" is precisely that it spares the viewer nothing of the clerical contradictions, throwing into the mix scenes at the edge of the bearable made of sex, fake exorcisms, more or less real demonic possessions, blind violence, eccentric costumes, and representations at the limit of absurdity.

Cinematic fabrications that represent what really happened in a much more gruesome way and which, obviously, the righteousness of the majority of public opinion, whether observant or not, could (and can) certainly not view favorably.

In short, with the same fervor with which the high spheres of Catholicism praised Mel Gibson's Passion, they heavily criticized and censored the Passion of Father Grandier, a sacrificial lamb in front of Cardinal Richelieu's will to annihilate the political and religious autonomy of local communities, which had become a danger to the power of the central clergy.

Many critics have noted how the trial and passion of Father Grandier echo those suffered by Joan of Arc in Dreyer's film a few decades earlier, with the fundamental difference that the Maid of Orleans was a virginal heroine who renounced God to alleviate the bodily suffering inflicted by her tormentors, while Father Grandier (again - an excellent performance by Oliver Reed) was a dissolute sinner who defended his faith until death, not yielding to torture and abuse of all kinds.

In this difference lies the entire high message given to us by Russell.

In conclusion, this is a film that can comfortably sit in your video library alongside other masterpieces of excess from those years like "A Clockwork Orange" and "Straw Dogs" and did not receive the success it deserved only because of the discomfort of the theme addressed.