Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave deliver career-defining portrayals in this motion picture that was initially prohibited for lewdness, exposing the brutality inherent in authority.

"I could never serve as Satan's follower. I lack the requisite modesty." These words are spoken by Father Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century French clergyman accused of sorcery, portrayed with flair by Oliver Reed in Ken Russell's provocative 1971 masterpiece; now fully restored and re-released in its unedited form following decades of suppression. It originates from a period when films, exhibited in downtown cinemas, still retained the capacity to startle, to insert that shock into polite cultural discourse, and to provoke meaningful debate over whether such shock—or conversely, a prohibition—was warranted.

The Devils draws from a factual episode of politically orchestrated mass delusion, adapted by Russell from two literary sources: Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun and John Whiting's theatrical piece The Devils. Certainly it is indecent; indecency serves as the glowing sulfurous pigment Russell applies to his canvas. It addresses indecency—yet the indecency does not lie in the eroticized depictions of the crucified Christ or frolicking nude nuns; rather, it is the brutality of power that is exposed as indecent. The notion of martyrs or heretics being incinerated at the stake has long been an accepted reality recounted in G-rated history lessons, a punishment that persisted well into the European Enlightenment. Russell reveals what this might genuinely entail, which involves an aggressive challenge to decorum.