Five Of The Best - Costume Dramas For People Who Hate Costume Dramas
The unbearable dressed in the unwearable. Trust us - not all period pictures are (big puffy) pants.
It was the American comedian Dennis Miller who said that the end credits to every Merchant-Ivory film should contain the line "Ladies - you now owe your gentleman some head". But while the vast majority of costume dramas might involve cuckolded folk getting into a spot over a stale tea cake, we think the following will even appeal to those who've wretched over The Remains Of The Day and hurled after seeing Howards End.
The Devils - The picture that kicked up such a furore on its release it's still unavailable in its original version, Ken Russell's The Devils is a story of religious persecution in the France of Louis XIII. Based on a novel by Brave New World author Aldous Huxley, Russell's picture doesn't just go to the edge, it plunges off the cliff into a horrific netherworld where heretics are burnt alive, nuns are exorcised through vicious sexual assault and everyone has the plague. Not in any sense for the faint-hearted, The Devils might be unbearable were it not for the incredible performances from Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, Derek Jarman's soaring sets (described by Phelim O'Neal as "a cross between a cathedral and a public toilet") and a story that is at heart both moral and tremendously profound. Those who think they might have a strong enough stomach ought to ask themselves how they'd feel seeing TV favourites like Brian Murphy and Dudley Sutton doing things that George Roper and Lovejoy's Tinker Dill wouldn't approve of in a million years.
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