Thinking Out Loud

Tag: 1971

  • France burns with religious mania in Ken Russell’s The Devils

    France burns with religious mania in Ken Russell’s The Devils

    Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) is a fictionalized account of the 17th-century Roman Catholic priest Urbain Grandier, tried and executed in Loudon, France. Questioning the authority of the Catholic Church is a controversial provocation at any time, but consider: if today, a sober movie like Spotlight (2015) is viewed as brave, then the The Devils’ depiction of the historical Church as depraved, sex-obsessed, and corrupt must have really rankled in 1971. It’s virtually impossible to imagine a company like Warner Bros. producing anything remotely like The Devils in our current climate of resurgent Christian intolerance and fundamentalism.

    Hard to find in any form, Filmstruck had what was apparently the abbreviated 109-minute US release version. I think it was part of the Warner Bros. / Turner library, and considering its still-controversial aspects, it’s probably unlikely it will reappear on Warner Bros.’ forthcoming streaming service. Perhaps it could find a home with a boutique outlet like The Criterion Collection, which has been unafraid to release other hot potatoes like The Last Temptation of Christ and Salo, or The 120 Days of Sodom.

    If possible to set its subject matter aside, it’s also a pity The Devils has been suppressed, for it is a lavish production with truly massive outdoor sets and if not literally a cast of thousands, then at least a cast of several hundred.

    Oliver Reed in The Devils
    It would seem that major Hollywood studios like Warner Bros. were less afraid to court controversy in 1971.

    Thanks to the late, lamented Filmstruck for filling another gap in my understanding of cinema history. A helpful reminder to young and old film fans approaching cinema history in non-chronological order: nothing comes out of nowhere. I had long assumed Terry Gilliam‘s Jabberwocky, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and The Life of Brian to be landmark satires of de-romanticized European history as crazed, filthy, ignorant, superstitious, and chaotic. But belatedly seeing The Devils now, Gilliam looks less a sudden deviation, and more part of a continuum.

    I know I am not alone in Gilliam being one of the gateway drugs that sparked a love of movies — the usual suspects usually being 1970s American directors like Coppola, Scorsese, Lucas, etc. I’ve since come to recognize the influences that led to so many other classics, but it’s great to know that even now, having caught up with thousands of other movies, I can still be surprised.

  • Charlton Heston is the alpha and The Omega Man

    Charlton Heston is the alpha and The Omega Man

    Now that’s a good intro: Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) cruises through an empty city with the top down. It’s eerie, but he seems happy, grooving to jazz from his onboard 8-track cassette deck. But suddenly! Screech! Ka-pow! He brakes, produces a machine gun and fires at a fleeting humanoid silhouette. A striking montage follows of a desolated, deserted city.

    Heston was once known as a liberal, and here his character entertains an interracial romance (with afro-licious Rosalind Cash) no more common in movies now than it was in 1971. Unfortunately, it’s now impossible to take Heston seriously, thanks to Phil Hartman’s classic mockery on Saturday Night Live and to Heston’s own Alzheimer’s-fueled descent into right-wing senility.

    Interestingly, Heston’s oeuvre is dominated by dystopian sci-fi: Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man, and Soylent Green form a trilogy of apocalyptic despair. Remakes of Apes (by Tim Burton) and Omega (Wil Smith’s I Am Legend) made him nearly obsolete even before he died. Can a new Soylent Green (which is, incidentally, much better than its reputation suggests) be far behind?

    Charlton Heston in The Omega Man
    Shopping at the end of the world, like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead

    Compared to the bestial vampires that populate I Am Legend, the creatures in The Omega Man are an intelligent, religious cult. They don’t attack Neville with technology (like, say, shoot him) simply because they choose not to.

    As for entertainment in a time before VHS, the last man alive on earth is stuck with whatever happened to be in the theaters at the time; he screens the concert film Woodstock over and over. As for The Omega Man‘s own music, the orchestral jazz pop score is not just outdated, but bizarrely inappropriate.

    The crucifixion pose at the end is a bit much. I didn’t expect much subtlety, but that’s laying it on a bit thick.