Raising Hell : Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils Paperback – 8 Nov 2012

I have a memory (possibly unreliable) from my early teens of seeing television ads for a double feature of William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) and Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) probably being shown at a drive-in. The part of the ad devoted to The Devils consisted largely of a crawl of text down the screen warning that the film was likely to deeply disturb some people. I was intrigued. Even if I had been old enough to see either film I would have been too terrified just because of their reputations, but I couldn't stop wondering about what horrors that film of Ken Russell's must contain. Later I would get to sample Russell's unique style of cinema through television showings of Women in Love (1969) and Mahler (1974). A few years ago I finally got a chance to see The Devils on the big screen. I did find the film very disturbing, but not because of its depictions of manic sexuality and torture so much as because it is the story of a principled man who was willing to endure torture and being burned alive rather than sell-out to the forces of oppression. It is disturbing for the same reason that the story of Jesus crucifixion is disturbing. It forces us to ask ourselves whether we have that kind of integrity. It is like the choices given to the victims in Saw (2004). Two options - both unthinkable.

But the film I saw was almost certainly not Russell's complete vision. Perhaps no film has had a rougher time with censorship than The Devils. The BBFC in Britain insisted on major cuts - including a scene involving sexually deranged nuns humping a giant statue of Christ on the cross (which has come to be referred to as the "Rape of Christ" sequence) - and then the company which financed the movie - Warner Brothers - and the American censors demanded even more cuts for the U.S. release. (These were ostensibly to obtain an R-rating, but the cuts were made and the film was still released with an X.) The version I saw was most likely the less censored UK cut. The negative for the cut scenes was found a few years ago by British film critic Mark Kermode. These scenes were shown on British television as part of a documentary and were inserted back into the movie, which has been given a few cinema showings, but Warner Brothers are insistent that the director's cut of the film cannot be released on DVD and that no cut of the film can be released on BluRay. The BFI have released the film on DVD in England, but it is still the old cut version. A shameful situation for a film which many consider to be a unique masterpiece.

Richard Crouse does a great job of telling the complex story of the making of the film, its censorship and the controversy surrounding it. The book is full of amusing anecdotes which make it a rollicking read, but it is the deeper analysis which gives food for thought. Crouse compares what happened with The Devils to the response to other controversial films of the time such as Straw Dogs (1971), A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Exorcist (1973). The comparison to The Exorcist is particularly interesting as both films deal with religion, exorcism and sexuality, in fact the most controversial scene in each film involves the sexual use of a crucifix by someone believed to be possessed. But The Exorcist is a deeply conservative film. The authorities (the priests) are there to save us from evil. The Devils is anti-authoritarian. It shows that the authorities of Louis XIII's France, both political and religious, were corrupt and willing to use religion to manipulate the people to give up their power. Russell's film is still a profoundly religious film with great respect for Catholicism (the director's own religion), but there are no comforting "good guys" who will come to anyone's rescue. Good in the film is a matter of a hard and lonely choice made by a flawed individual.

At the centre of the sometimes hysterical responses the film has elicited is the issue of religion and sexuality. The so-called possessions which occurred amongst the cloistered nuns in Loudun in 1634 were most likely a case of mass sexual hysteria. Just because someone decides to give up the worldly life doesn't mean that they have no sexual feelings, and nothing is likely to increase those feelings so much as to make them something forbidden. Most of the time if we are told we absolutely can't have something we end up wanting it more. And there is a strong similarity between sexual fetishism and religious adoration. Whether one believes that it is reasonable for those who seek the spiritual to give up the sexual or not, the presence of the sexual within the subconscious of such individuals has to be acknowledged if we are not to dangerously lose touch with reality. To juxtapose the sexual and the religious should do no harm to the religious if it is real. If it is false, anything can harm it and anything should harm it. And, of course, perverse sexual behaviour from religious figures is not just something which happened in 1634 under the influence of "the demon Asmodeus". Russell wasn't just engaging in cheap shock tactics. He was examining issues we ignore at our peril.
flag

I have read much about the 'The Devils' and this book provided a lot of new information I had not known. I enjoyed the book and was always eager to get back to it. I liked the writing style and for me it was a real page turner. If you are at all interested in 'The Devils', this is a great place to start.

It's often difficult to know what errors exist in works like this but I feel the basic points were correct:
1. Ken Russell made a movie called 'the Devils'.
2. This movie was subject to extreme censorship by just about everyone who had the opportunity.
3. Warner Brothers shamelessly abandoned the movie out of fear and cowardice and eagerly assisted in its unholy censorship.
4. The movie is a MASTERPIECE.
5. Warner Brothers continues to reject this work of art and should be derided as a result

Ultimately I was left with a real sense of sadness driven mostly by Warner Brothers clinging to the wreckage of arcane, Hayes Code treatment of a modern classic. Actually, they should hang their heads in shame. Artists have been censored for years and happily, as more enlightened times come, the folly of this is seen for what it is.

Since Warner Brothers don't have the stomach for art, they should hand the reigns to someone else who has. I suggest Criterion, who have presented many titles that some would ban, and have, yet they are lauded as thee PREMIER supplier of important films. There is a strong, vibrant market for important movies presented in pristine uncut prints on DVD and BLU RAY.

I have seen 'The Devils' many times, in many forms, in many edits, at many venues. It is a MASTERPIECE! It contains powerful ideas that challenge thinking and get movie execs nickers in a twist. Just think, a 40+ year old movie has them still quivering in their boots.

Anyway, great book about a true MASTERPIECE. You can't go wrong reading the book. But, watch the movie and join the cause to get it properly released. Even if you don't like it, you should dislike others censoring what you can see even more.

Raising Hell: The Unmaking of Ken Russell's The Devils by Richard Crouse (2012): Fascinating account by the ubiquitous Crouse about Ken Russell's The Devils, possibly the most controversial film ever released by a major studio. And I was fascinated even though I, like a lot of people, have never actually seen the movie.

Russell was a stylistic iconoclast in even his most pedestrian films, but never moreso than in The Devils, which adapted a non-fiction-based Aldous Huxley book about a possession frenzy in a 17th-century French nunnery into a metaphysical and carnal horror story about faith and politics.

Widely reviled by critics and moral pillars alike when first released in 1971, The Devils was cut and recut by the studio afterwards. Today, I'm pretty sure it's still impossible to get a non-bootleg director's cut of the film. Puritanical Warner Brothers has spent 40 years trying to pretend the film doesn't exist. Nonetheless, it's a cult film among viewers and film-people alike, as testimonials in this book to its greatness from Alex Cox, Guillermo del Toro, Joe Dante, David Cronenberg, David Lynch, and many others show.

Crouse also does a solid job of demonstrating how studios have changed since 1971, and not for the better in an artistic sense: no major studio would even think about making or releasing an expensive, controversial 'Art' film like The Devils today. The blockbuster mentality has pushed most movies that aspire to do something more than sell action figures to the fringes, while 'serious' studio movies must be dignified or feel-good in their quasi-artistic pretensions. Because as we all know, mental illness can be cured by ballroom dancing. David Cronenberg taught us that in Spider. Oh, wait a minute, no he didn't.

If there is such a thing as an auteur, Russell was one, though Crouse does a fine job of laying out the necessity of Russell's collaborators, most especially the protean wild-man actor Oliver Reed and set designer (and later director) Derek Jarman. Man, I really want to see The Devils now. Highly recommended.

In some ways I'm really late to The Devils party, but then, so are most people who missed it's original run in the 1970s, and of those, even fewer saw Russell's incredible work in anything like its complete form.

Film critic Richard Crouse, after Mark Kermode, probably ranks as one of the film's staunchest defenders among the critical echelons, not always an easy thing to be, given the hysterical bile and howls of outrage sometimes levelled at the film.

He has delved into the three plus decades of controversy, censorship, rediscovery and reappraisals that surround this most powerful of cinematic statements on the abuses of faith, the corruption of Church and State, the psychology of demonic possession, and the brutality of scapegoating and crafted an excellent document on a hounded classic.

Extensive interviews with both surviving and since-deceased cast and crew, along with contemporary filmmakers who are fans of the flick, illuminate almost the entire complex story behind the strange events at Loudon in 17th century France. Oliver Reed, Ken Russell, Gemma Jones, Mike Bradsell, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Derek Jarman all chip in with funny, disarming and spirited anecdotes that any afficionado will love reading about.

If there are any small caveats, they would be a brief dismay at the lack of photographs, posters or set designs to illustrate the incredible story of the film, and a little more about a couple of details on the cuts imposed by Russell himself, as well as the censors. There's no description of a couple of scenes rediscovered in the Director's cut(2004) or the Hell on Earth documentary. Also, the gorgeous BFI DVD released this year mentions a scene Ken decided himself to scrap and reshoot starring comic genius Spike Milligan, which I'd liked to have seen mentioned, but no matter. There's a couple of tantalising hints of the original, much longer screenplay here that might have been slightly expanded upon, but again, this isn't essential. This is a worthy examination of this powerful and unforgettable British masterpiece.

I was one of the blessed - or damned - few who had the great fate to see THE DEVILS in toto when it first came out in 1971. It was stunning then and is still stunning today. A work of brutal brilliance - arguably director Ken Russell's masterpiece. As a matter of fact THE DEVILS was the immediate reply from Russell when I asked him what his own best movie might be.

As of this writing, the best viewable version of the many versions out there, is the Angel Digital DVD. What it lacks in image and sound quality is made up for as it is the completest version extant. The controversial Rape of Christ sequence was found after a grueling search and is reinstated into this widescreen version. Plus there are extremely good extras included on the disc. Alas, someday Warner Brothers might have the smarts to release this - and not as so many films are released by Warners, as part of their archives. Glad as I am to have the archive films on DVD, to not include even chapter stops with the final product is absurd. Anyway, THE DEVILS is a great movie, despite its having a bit too fingerprints on its celluloid revealing the touch of its time.

I had been waiting for the release of the book RAISING HELL for quite some time now, having pre-ordered it many moons ago. Alas, the wait was not really worth it.

Crouse's book is a slim volume, too much so for such a weighty subject. Even though a handsomely produced little book, it cries out for photographs, even if only a few. But the main disappointment comes from the text itself. There are errors of fact that I caught that completely undermine the rest of the book and make me uncomfortable wondering what else is wrong in the book that I did not catch. Richard Crouse, the author, is a film critic, a radio host, author of six other books and news columnist for a major newspaper. Well, bully for him - but perhaps he should slow down some. Why do I say this? For one thing, the intro to RAISING HELL goes into the lead up to his interview with Ken Russell at a screening of THE DEVILS quite late in the director's life - and we learn that the interview was some 55 minutes. A transcript of the full interview would have been nice to have in the book.

But here are my gripes: on page 14 Malcolm McDowell is listed along with Dirk Bogarde, Tom Courtney, Albert Finney and Alan Bates as being one of the initial Angry Young Men in British cinema. But McDowell was, more precisely, one of the second or third wave of this new breed of realistic actor. The first wave ran from 1953 - 1960 and McDowell's first time on camera was in 1964. And while on the subject of Malcolm McDowell, on page 121 of Crouse's book he claims that Malcolm as Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE "tap dances his way through an attack on a helpless victim while 'Singin'the Rain' bops along on the soundtrack." Well, Alex is not tap-dancing and it is he who is singing the famous song as he enacts his villainy. To say that the song is on the soundtrack - and not coming directly and only from the character in this instance - is inaccurate and misleading.

On page 59 we learn that THE DEVILS star Oliver Reed "died of a heart attack...in Malta, on May 2, 1999, after a night of heavy drinking and arm wrestling with off-duty sailors." Although Crouse refers back to Cliff Goodwin's biography of the actor (EVIL SPIRITS) quite often, apparently he didn't read this part of the account carefully enough. As related in Crouse's book, one would think Reed died the morning after a hellaciouis night. But the truth is he had the heart attack in the bar and in the early afternoon.

Now, I might have let the above errors pass. But when I came to page 61 and read the following, the book nearly dropped from my hands: in discussing Vanessa Redgrave's career, Crouse tells us that the actress was nominated for Best Actress for an Academy Award for "the lead in ISADORA, a Ken Russell-directed biopic about dancer Isadora Duncan."

Apart from the author's startling ignorance in this matter (mind you that Crouse interviewed Russell for 55 minutes in 2010 and is an alleged film critic who wrote a book called THE 100 BEST MOVIES YOU'VE NEVER SEEN), well, apart from Crouse's foggy-brained moment, what of those who wrote the glowing blurbs on the back of the book itself? Is it possible that Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, John Landis, Joe Dante and even Mrs. Ken Russell didn't catch - and urge to correct - this totally ridiculous claim? Anyone and everyone who knows anything or everything about the work of Ken Russell KNOWS that he did NOT direct the Vanessa Redgrave film, but did direct for the BBC TV a film about Isadora starring Vivian Pickles as the dancer.

So the troubling thing is this: how could this happen?
In recent years I have come across way too many errors of fact in way too many books. It doesn't matter if the publisher is a small press such as the publishers of this book or a giant one: errors are becoming all too frequent. What happened? Did spell-check obliterate the need for astute proof-readers? Are people getting paid big bucks to proof-read poorly? And what of the authors themselves - and their family and friends and fans - how could no one catch this boner of a claim about Ken Russell and Isadora??? The book is only 192 un-indexed, padded pages long. How difficult is it to fine-comb the galleys before going to irrevocable press? How lazy can can some people get?

The bottom line is this: the error about ISADORA is immense. One is left wondering not only what else in the book is erroneous, but more urgently, how much does the author truly know about his subject if he could offer up before the reading public such a devastating error of easily-checked fact. Think about it: the author did a draft - and did not catch it. He most likely did a rewrite and did not catch it. He presumably had many folks from the publishing house and friends of his read the manuscript - and no one pointed it out to him. And then came the galleys - and there was still no one to catch the major error. This is why I say Richard Crouse should slow down and not wear so many hats. Afterall, not every hat fits!