Word: grandiere
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...Loudun. She tells her confessor that in tormented night hours, she is forced to utter obscene words and participate in obscene acts. The nuns in her charge are similarly afflicted. In a fit of possession, with her strangulated sepulchral voice suggesting The Exorcist, Sister Jeanne reveals the devil inside -Grandier-a neighboring vicar whom she has never actually seen...
...Grandier (Nicholas Pennell) is the sexiest of priests and the soul of romantic ardor, whether consoling widows or initiating virgins. He is also witty, proud and urbanely condescending, almost courting enemies low and high. The highest, Cardinal Richelieu, has him brought to trial, at which he is condemned and burned at the stake...
...final agony of Grandier's death throes, the most frustrating question of all arises: was he all along a male Saint Joan, a martyr not so much to God but to mankind's inability to receive and for give its authentic saints? Nicholas Pennell's Grandier makes the transition from seductive charmer to skeptic to nail-pierced witness of faith with ever mounting authority. Martha Henry is not as lucky with her Sister Jeanne. She seems more like a closet loony than a woman overwhelmed by a powerful but long-suppressed sexuality...
...made as offensive, though visually awesome, film. With "The Music Lovers," a biography of Peter Tchak ovsky, Russell's glory, felling reached operatic heights that could at least balance out the ludicrous hamminess and involuted romanticism of his film. In The Devils, the case of Father Urbain Grandier burned at the stake in 1634 for bewitching the Ursuline nuns of London, Russell's cinematic extravagance came to border on pathology. The film was a festival in debauchery, horror, perversion, and sadism...
...histrionic verve that is reminiscent in equal parts of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Living Theater and Bedlam. The supporting cast (Dudley Sutton and Michael Gothard most prominent among them) act like a chorus and look like creatures from a Bosch triptych. Oliver Reed is suitably forceful as Grandier; it is indeed his best performance. Vanessa Redgrave, a consummate actress, is fine as Sister Jeanne, except that she tends to get lost amidst all the sound and fury...