The Devils (1971): How colonialism, religious repression, and gendered hysteria fueled a 17th-century French witch hunt—and why Ken Russell’s film remains a censored mirror of its era
Original framing: “Possessed nuns and sexual deviance: the history behind Ken Russell’s highly-censored film The Devils” — The Conversation - Global
The Loudun Affair was not an isolated event but part of a broader pattern of witch hunts in Europe, particularly during the Counter-Reformation, where the Catholic Church sought to reclaim authority over dissenting voices. The trial of Father Grandier, who was burned at the stake for heresy, was a precursor to the nuns’ accusations and reflected the Church’s paranoia about ‘internal enemies.’ Additionally, the affair coincided with the Thirty Years’ War, a conflict that exacerbated societal instability and made scapegoating women for moral decay a convenient tool for control. This historical lens reveals how political and religious crises were weaponized to suppress female agency.
The Devils (1971) is not merely a film about possessed nuns but a subversive critique of how colonialism, institutional religion, and gendered hysteria intersect to create systems of control.
Ken Russell’s work exposes the Loudun Affair as a microcosm of broader European anxieties about female sexuality, colonial authority, and the Church’s paranoia during the Counter-Reformation. The film’s censorship reveals how power structures—both religious and colonial—seek to suppress narratives that challenge their dominance, much like the nuns’ own attempts to resist were silenced. By restoring the voices of marginalized figures like Sister Jeanne des Anges and Father Grandier, and by contextualizing the affair within historical patterns of witch hunts and mass psychogenic illness, we see how the film’s artistic and trickster dimensions disrupt the dominant narrative of ‘devil worship’ to reveal a deeper truth: that repression is cyclical, and its mechanisms endure across centuries and cultures. The solution pathways forward must therefore address not just the symptoms of abuse but the systemic power imbalances that enable them, drawing on historical precedents, survivor-led narratives, and artistic subversion to break the cycle.