This new DVD issue of Mother Joan of the Angels is neatly timed, coming on the heels of the BFI’s release of Ken Russell’s The Devils. For this film is based on the same incident that inspired Russell’s film – the alleged possession of a convent-load of nuns in Loudon – but picks up the story after the events shown in Russell’s film.

This film follows the arrival of Father Josef Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) at the convent – here relocated to a sparse Polish countryside, where the only other signs of life (and death) are an inn just outside the convent walls and the stake where Father Grandier (or Garniec as he is named here) was burned alive. His mission is to exorcise Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnicka), who has been identified as being at the centre of the possession – four priests already in attendance are dealing with the other nuns. However, he soon finds himself subject to the same unnatural pressures – be they from the Devil or from the pressures of living such a cloistered life – that have affected the nuns, and an attraction between the priest and the nun he is here to cleanse begins to develop.

Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1961 film, shot in crisp black and white in a series of mostly static, long and wide scenes, naturally lacks the excesses that Russell was free to indulge in a decade later, but the sense of restraint is fitting here, reflecting as it does the unspoken desires of the central characters, and the overly-restrictive world that they inhabit. Each deals with it in their own way – Sister Joan with her ‘possession’ that conveniently frees her and the other nuns from their religious shackles (notably, the only nun not ‘possessed’ is the one willing to break the rules and sneak down to the inn), and Father Josef with his self-flagellation – a masturbation substitute here and in real life.

It’s impossible not to see parallels here with Russell’s film – and, indeed, with The Exorcist, a much less ambiguous tale of possession and redemption. Certainly, Kawalerowicz’s scenes of possession offer up visual foreshadows of the scenes that those two films could expand on – the hysteria, here more restrained but equally unsettling, the voyeuristic audience making the exorcisms into more of a public performance than a religious rite, with both priests and nuns playing their parts on cue… and the idea of the priest taking on the possession to excuse his own failings. In the end, his faith has been challenged, but not extinguished – despite the horror of the final moments, this is still a man who believed in his God. He just accepts that God is responsible for creating the evil as well ad the good.

With startling central performances, astonishing visuals (beautifully presented in this restored edition) and an erotic charge that is subtle yet omnipresent, this is astonishing stuff. Pioneering work of nunsploitation and a fine work of art – if you are a fan of Russell’s work, this will be an intriguing supplement to the story.

DAVID FLINT

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