Gender and Sexuality

This chapter focuses on the representation of gender and sexuality in Ken Russell's The Devils (1973). In terms of gender and sexuality, The Devils possess, at its core, a very traditional outlook that is quite a good fit with the philosophies of many of those responsible for the film's critical opprobrium. The protagonist, Grandier, is a red-blooded male and apparently a heartthrob for the majority of Loudun's female population. As he is being tortured in the film's latter stages, Grandier confesses, ‘I have been a man. I have loved women’, clearly seeing the two things as being concordant. This statement also serves to further emasculate Louis XIII. More problematically, there are numerous female characters in The Devils, and the bulk of them are defined through their relationships to/with the louche Grandier—most are in love/lust with the priest and/or driven hysterical by him. Regardless of where they stand on the Grandier spectrum, one thing all these women have in common is that they are infantilised through their relationships with/to the priest. Whether fantasising about Grandier-as-Christ or giving in to her onanistic urges in clear view of one of her equally sex-starved charges, Jeanne is a hysteric whose happiness completely depends on the feelings of a man she's never even met.