The Devils (film) The Devils (film) The Devils is a 1971 British historical drama horror film directed by Ken Russell and starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave. Russell's screenplay is based partly on the 1952 book "The Devils of Loudun" by Aldous Huxley, and partly on the 1960 play "The Devils" by John Whiting, also based on Huxley's book. The film is a dramatised historical account of the rise and fall of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest executed for witchcraft following the supposed possessions in Loudun, France. Reed plays Grandier in the film and Vanessa Redgrave plays a hunchbacked sexually repressed
Vanessa Redgrave smoking. Redgrave was made a Commander (CBE) of the Order of the British Empire in 1967. Reportedly, she declined a damehood in 1999. Redgrave describes herself as a person of faith and attends a Catholic church. In 1961, Vanessa Redgrave was an active member of the Committee of 100 and its working group. Redgrave and her brother Corin joined the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s. She ran for parliament several times as a party member but never received more than a few hundred votes. Redgrave made her American TV debut as concentration camp survivor Fania Fénelon in the Arthur