This is a story about a priest sent to a small parish in the Polish countryside, believed to be under demonic possession, finds his own temptations, waiting.
When Martin Scorsese selects a film for his Masterpieces of Polish Cinema series, one that won the Special Jury Prize at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, you know that you are watching a masterpiece.
This director's seventh film, his is a slight resume of only 17 films across 50 years, and this film that has the ability to unnerve. That unnerving is also experienced in Brunello Rondi's The Demon, the film where William Friedkin got his spider walk-idea, only Rondi does it without wires, courtesy of Daliah Lavi's performance. Another is the 1970 Czech film, Witchhammer, as well as Ken Russell's The Devils.
However, at the same time, Mother Joan of the Angels, and those other mentioned films, overwhelm you in its surrealistic beauty. Mother Joan of the Angels a film that takes an unconventional Hollywood approach to explore spiritual issues and religious megalomania, but is misclassified as a horror film in some quarters.
It's also a film considered as one of the best Polish films ever produced.
As with Witchhammer, that director's lone foray into the horror genre, Mother Joan of the Angels is also a historical drama concerned with brutal, religious-based inquisitions. Only, instead of witches, we're dealing with Nuns. All three films I've noted are based in the same subject matter, with Kawalerowicz, basing Mother Joan on a novella of the same title, one loosely based on the seventeenth century Loudun possessions.
While Ken Russell's The Devils, from 1971, depicts the trial and death of French Priest Urbain Grandier, Mother Joan of the Angels continues the story after Grandier's death. The story concerns a spurned nun in 1634 France accusing a priest of using black magic to seduce the nun and her sisters that led to their demon possession. After Grandier's execution, Mother Joan takes his place after his execution.
The quality of this film's cinematography, direction, and acting is a film that humbling. This film is simply perfect. Watch it.
