by Billy Butler
(Sister Jeanne – played by Vanessa Redgrave – at the feet of Oliver Reed’s Urbain Grandier in a religious vision reminiscent of Mary Magdalene at Jesus’ feet. The Devils, 1971, Dir. Ken Russell)
Film is a powerful medium. It has the ability to affect our lives – the power to inspire us, to change our perspective or outlook on life; film can comfort us and bring people together. It also has, if you share a similar view as the controversial Mary Whitehouse, the ability to “teach self-interest rather than philanthropy, violence rather than gentleness, a disregard for human dignity rather than a respect for it” (1974: ‘Controlling the Explosive Influence’, The Spectator: p.14). This essay will outline what constitutes ‘extreme cinema’ and weather it should be subject to censorship by analysing Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971) and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Both films heavily feature themes of morality, sexual perversion, and power and this essay will compare and contrast their similarities and differences. Throughout this essay, reference to key scholarship by writers such as James C. Robertson, Sian Barber and Ruth Austin Miller will be made in order to navigate these core themes and illuminate the historical social contexts in which these films were censored. After all, both texts are anchored in historical fact and literary precedent – leaving an overarching question for this essay: were these films censored for their themes or rather their visuals?
Russell ensures the audience is aware that The Devils derives from a true story with an opening card declaring “The principal characters lived and the major events depicted in the film actually took place.” Despite the film asserting itself as factual it is equally occupied in spectacle and artifice. The first scene shows the French King Louis XIII perform as the goddess Venus on stage in full drag – wearing nothing more than a bikini, in front of the Cardinal Richelieu. His audience is full of men, presenting as women, being lusted over by other men as they remark “I wonder who his majesty will lay with today.” Immediately Russell subverts the expected representation of aristocracy being respectable and a manifestation of divinity but rather sexual deviancy and homoerotic spectacle. It is perhaps the deformation of the status quo that led to much of The Devils criticism. As Ken Perry, the once chief censor of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), observed – and referenced in James Robertson’s The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action, 1913-1972:
I consider this to be a nauseating piece of film making. Whatever the deeper meaning intended by Ken Russell, it comes to the screen with such elements of sadism, cruelty, pornography and blasphemy, it will appeal chiefly to the prurient… In my opinion the film offends the second general principle of the Board in that it is likely to give offence to a reasonably minded cinema audience. (1993, p.137)
Perry’s observations demonstrate an attitude that any graphic depictions of sex and violence – and, in context of the times, such sexual ‘perversions’ as homosexuality, forgo the right to be read and considered seriously. As such, Perry concludes that The Devils can be read no further than as gratuitous, sadistic, blasphemous pornography. Russell’s disruption of the status-quo can only appeal to cinema audiences who themselves exist on the fringes of a moral society. However, what Perry fails to consider in his dissent of The Devils is why these graphic depictions are entirely essential to the deeper meaning of the film. Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is infamous for its graphic depictions of sexual violence, perversion, and torture. Inspired by the equally infamous novel by the Marquis de Sade, the name and works of which sadism derives, Salò tells the true story of a group of teenage Italian boys and girls rounded up by fascist men who were then systematically raped, tortured and ultimately murdered.
In a scene that echoes that of the opening of The Devils, the group of fascist men, dressed as women, are seen to marry the teenage boys they have abducted. This is after seeing the men marry one another’s daughters and after making one pair of their victims ‘marry’ one another. Again, the sexual perversions of these men frame the traditional and expected structures of society as being perverse themselves. In The Devils, King Louis XIII is frivolous and unserious about his burden, or lack thereof, responsibility. Salò departs from this in that it does not so much criticise the class structure but more so the social components to that structure. Certainly, there is a power structure in Salò – the fascists exert complete control over the tragic teenagers who are reduced down to being nothing more than fleshy objects – toys for their new masters. However, the numerous wedding ceremonies throughout the film that mock the sacred rituals speak to not simply the corruption of fascist rule but equally the dehumanisation subjected by nonfacist rule. Ruth Miller in The Erotics of Corruption: Law, Scandal and Political Perversion (2008, p.112-113) speaks to how the lines between the moral, regulated world and the corrupt, sexual world converge as the “bureaucratic apparatus” defines married couples into biological and sexual roles. This is to say that if the moral and noncorrupt operates outside the world of sex it falls into a grey area when the same system regulates who and what kind of sex people can have. So much so that Miller states, “the line between the abstract, rational and noncorrupt and the fleshy, irrational, and corrupt is not an obvious one – that to the extent that all modern bureaucracy is about dehumanization.” (2008, p.113)
This is a major theme in The Devils which sees Oliver Reed’s promiscuous protagonist, Father Urbain Grandier, finally commit to and secretly marry Madeline – both of whom have significant roles within the church. The promiscuity of Father Grandier, as his title would suggest, ultimately brings great consequences for him. Not only is it an example of moral corruption within an organised system but also creates enemies for himself – such as a lady from a noble family who becomes pregnant with his illegitimate child. Grandier ultimately rejects her and allows her to be subjected to the dishonour of being an unmarried woman with a child. To this end it is not simply enough to condemn them for having sex outside of marriage but equally the structure of power itself. She is ostracised because she falls outside of the system which regulates who and when she can have sex. Grandier, being part of that very system remains revered and beloved and all at once a hypocrite. Indeed then, to compare the power structures between the films, Grandier would appear to be in the category of the fascist leaders in Salò. This however is made complicated by the political world of The Devils which sees Cardinal Richelieu scheming to be in control of France whilst King Louis XIII is preoccupied in his lavish world. Instead Grandier represents that of a rival to the fascist men of Salò whilst complicatedly being cut from the same cloth. This further speaks to Millers assertion that the line between the corrupt and uncorrupted blur.
Throughout The Devils, Grandier is lusted over by countless women but most famously by a convent of nuns led by Sister Jeanne played by Vanessa Redgrave. Jeanne’s sexual obsession with Grandier reaches its climax when she declares that he has possessed her and her convent after discovering his secret marriage. This perhaps encapsulates best the true difference between the films. Salò has clear victims and perpetrators with no overlap whereas in The Devils, with the exception of the King and the Cardinal, they are all both victim and perpetrator. Jeanne is a victim to the very system she is so revered in and also weaponizes it for her own lustful revenge. This to such an extent that when Grandier is ultimately burned at the stake for her possession she uses his charred bones as a phallus for her own sexual gratification. Again, the subversion by perversion of the status-quo by showing sexually active and emboldened nuns.
There is more to the readings of these sexual perversions however than the simple line of thought that all bureaucracy is ultimately corrupt. Salò is infamous for its extremely graphic depictions of coprophilia (a fetish for faeces) but this is more than mere shock value. Throughout Salò the film is broken into chapters called “circles” inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy: the Anteinferno – one such chapter being “The Circle of Shit”. Throughout this chapter of the film, we see one of the fascist libertines force a girl to eat his faeces after she prays to God – an act that is met with severe consequences. Later all the members of the group, victims and perpetrators, are sat around the dinner table eating plates of faeces. The stomach churning scenes do more than just to show the truly sadistic nature of the libertines but demonstrate the influence of globalism on culture. Krisztian Korasz writes about the sexual gratification of coprophilia in the article, Illustrating and Evaluating the Psychosexual Symbolic Meaning of the Coprophilia Through the Film Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom, (2016, p.152) describing it as often being a sado-masochistic act – with one person wanting to be humiliated and the other inflicting the humiliation. The entire act then revolving around an imbalance of power. In this context Pasolini discussed, as referenced in Encapsulating Evil – Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom – Shocking Cinema (2021) that the eating of the faeces was a metaphor for fast food that, in context of the time, was beginning to take the world by storm. Fast food restaurants in a modern context occupy near enough every town and city around the world with the same food. It is evident then that a cultural flattening occurs with the same food offerings available despite region and cultural history; this is food that people often feel guilty for enjoying and makes the distributors wealthy. The comparison then to fast food and the sado-masochistic act of coprophilia demonstrates just how these films convey deeper meaning with use of their extreme visuals – not despite them, as the aforementioned Ken Perry believed.
(Sadistic Libertines laughing next to tortured children. Salò: or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975, Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini)
It is perhaps then worth considering the historical context of the decision-making process of the BBFC in 1970’s Britain. Sian Barber details in Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot (2011, p.70) that the backlash to The Devils was perpetuated by the election of the Conservative government under Edward Heath who was “set firmly against the liberalisation of the arts.” Whilst the BBFC operates outside of government jurisdiction it does at least pinpoint the pulse of the majority of the countries attitude. However, this is to say that the censorship of these films was simply down to a puritanical film board. Stephen Murphy, a member in the BBFC, wrote to Leeds County Council in 1973 discussing the Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange (1972); whilst the letter specifically talks about a film outside the case studies of this essay it does make for curious insight into board members of the BBFC:
It is a brilliant and disturbing film concerned, as your committee will see, with an almost theological argument about free will… The film is thus an intellectual argument though the story itself is sometimes savage, sometimes funny. It has been argued that not everyone will see it in these terms. This is true, but it has never been a justification for censorship. If it were, then Hamlet would be the first victim. (2011, p.73)
Murphy, in this passage, highlights a central debate in the discussion of censorship – the matter of respectability. Invoking Shakespeare’s Hamlet which is renowned for its moral and theological discussion all the while its violence is accepted yet the violence and sexual scenes of a film such as The Devils is too extreme despite its theological and moral debate.
But as Barber writes, the BBFC was in a crisis during the 1970’s – Murphy was investigated by the Heath government for his expressing of personal opinion to Leeds County Council and far more puritanical pressure groups were pushing for a tightening up of censorship criteria. It is then far more complicated than to simply blame the BBFC for the censorship of such films and instead the wider context of the country concerned with violent imagery inviting violent antisocial behaviour. This again is something Murphy addresses stating that “this is the sort of accusation that has been made dozens of times in the past about plays, films, radio and television programmes and never has the accusation in the end been justified.” (2011, p.73)
It becomes clear then that these films were censored due to the wider social sensibilities. It is then especially interesting that these films speak to these very sensibilities – questioning social structures, power struggles and consumerism whilst blasting religious righteousness. No surprise then that these religious groups would be upset by these films. That being said what these texts really bring into focus is the defilement of Christianity – Salò by showing its absence as a godless torture and The Devils by demonstrating how religion can be corrupted and weaponised for one’s own gain.
As previously discussed, Sister Jeanne lies about Grandier having possessed her in order for her to act out her sexual fantasies. There is however a wealth of examples in The Devils which also demonstrates how the film works as a warning against religious zealotry. Most memorably then is the infamous sequence that takes place during what is dubbed “The Rape of Jesus.” This is one of the many scenes that, as Barber writes, “both the BBFC and the production studio Warner Bros demanded” be cut from the film (2011, p.70). The scene that is released and viewable today is heavily edited down from what was originally intended but depicts the convent of nuns in a sexual hysteria in a cathedral. As it plays out, the nuns gyrate on different religious paraphernalia, engage in sexual acts, and run around naked – Father Barre, played by Michael Gothard, attempts to exorcise the nuns, however it becomes increasingly obvious he is simply making it up on the spot. In a previous scene with Sister Jeanne, Barre decides that in order to exorcise the ‘demon’ from her that she must having boiling water inserted into her vagina. This of course does not work and instead shows the warped control Barre enjoys exerting over people. Much to the same effect in “The Rape of Jesus” scene, Barre’s attempts at exorcising the demons from the nuns does not work because, of course, he has made it all up – there are no demons. The arrival of King Louis to the cathedral, with his “phial” of the blood of Jesus Christ, emboldens Barre to decree that it would almost certainly expel any and all demons. It would then transpire that Louis was in fact toying with Barre; there was no phial of Jesus’ blood and Barre is left embarrassed as Louis exits asking Barre “Oh, Reverend sir, what sort of a trick are you playing on us?”
Barre’s detachment from reality and ability to believe his own lies so fervently has echoes of that of the fascists in Salò. In both cases they make the rules as they go along – swapping and warping as they see fit to meet their own narrative. Ultimately though there is a key difference in the characters motivations. The libertines are self-described “anarchists” who prohibit any mention to God or Jesus – their actions are designed to be sadistic because that is where they find their sexual pleasure. Barre on the other hand actively thinks he is doing the moral thing, the right thing, and does it because of Jesus. Whilst these two factions could not seem any further apart – they actually represent the same real-world reality. The libertines in Salò represent bureaucracy and nonfascist rule by being represented as a fascist group. As previously discussed, the globalisation and flattening of culture through fast food and the comparison to coprophilia, positions corporate capitalism as a neo-fascist ideology. Similarly, the bureaucracy of The Devils demonstrates control and the dehumanisation of the subjects – being labelled demons for simply having sexual urges. Suddenly both films begin to entwine with one another thematically with both pointing to a far more culturally diverse and understanding society. It is interesting then that these films would be considered “blasphemous” when in reality they speak to the defilement and weaponization of religion.
The Devils situates this weaponization in a real-world historical context with the persecution of Protestants in France. Throughout the film Protestants are hunted down and burnt alive for their beliefs but there is one sadistic scene that is eerily similar to the tortures of Salò. It plays as the Cardinal speaks with King Louis XIII who is firing a gun off into the distance as target practice. It is only later that it is revealed Louis is shooting protestants dressed as black birds before declaring to Richelieu that he has “another Protestant bird for your bank.” The jubilation at the murder of each Protestant is reminiscent of the final scenes of Salò where the fascists ultimately torture and murder an unfortunate selection of the teenagers. Whilst the tortures they suffer are comparatively much worse than that of the black bird Protestants – the humiliation and dehumanisation is eerily similar. One teenager has his eye gouged out, another has their tongue cut off, nipples removed, raped and all ultimately are murdered. The fascists throughout this take on different roles: executioner, accomplices, and that of the voyeur. The viewer is placed in the role of the voyeur rendering them complicit in this final heinous act. It speaks to then how the onlooker is just as guilty as the executioner. How society is complicit in its own dehumanisation at the hands of capitalism because society participates in it. Whilst this opens a world of ethical and philosophical questions far beyond the remit of this essay it does, once again, bring forth the point that these extreme films offer complex textual readings.
It is also worth noting how these films conclude. Whilst they both end with horrific and unjustified executions the resolutions feel quite different. Salò ends with an anti-climax as two soldiers for the libertines dance whilst the systematic torture occurs outside. They simply talk to each other about their girlfriends before the film ends; this anti-climax suggests a never-ending circle (a key theme to the film as it is, as previously mentioned, inspired by the circles of Hell) and this sadistic torture will continue forever. On the other hand, The Devils concludes with the Cardinal having gained even more control of France, Grandier dead and his wife Madeline left to stumble through the remains of her destroyed homeland. The Devils very much does have a climax – there is a definitive destruction, Grandier lost. But, as Madeline crosses the crumbled city walls the outside world looks as barren and bleak as hell itself. Whilst Salò ends during the violence, implying more is still to come, The Devils gives the sense that whilst more violence and tyrannical theocratic rule is to come it ultimately does have an end. There is an assured destruction whereas its counterpart feels more eternally damned.
To conclude, reading of these films as being nothing more that “violent”, “pornographic”, “blasphemy”, completely disregards the point these films are making. Where Mary Whitehouse speaks to how extreme films “teach self-interest rather than philanthropy, violence rather than gentleness, a disregard for human dignity rather than a respect for it” (1974: ‘Controlling the Explosive Influence’, The Spectator: p.14) these films do indeed speak to the need to respect human dignity and to value gentleness through their depictions of unimaginable violence and dehumanisation through bureaucracy. The depictions of religious zealotry and the need to constantly rewrite the rules of what is and is not allowed in order for their own perverse systems to withstand is ironic. As Stephen Murphy pointed out, Hamlet features violent and disturbing content and yet is considered to be one of the greatest stories ever told. The need to control and censor from governments, pressure groups and the BBFC demonstrates perfectly what Russell and Pasolini are discussing in their films – that bureaucracy and self-righteousness flattens culture and ultimately corrodes society.
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