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, while Vanessa Redgrave plays Sister Jeanne, a sexually repressed Abbess obsessed with Grandier.
