Review from Strictly Film School

A gaunt, weary priest named Father Joseph Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) arrives at a quaint village inn to rest for the evening, eating his scant portion of bread alongside a bawdy, drunken patron named Wolodkowicz (Zygmunt Zintel) who is quick to ridicule his asceticism. The voluptuous barmaid, Adwosia (Maria Chwalibóg), goaded by Wolodkowicz into foretelling the priest's future, provides two cryptic predictions for Father Suryn: that he will meet a maiden who is a mother, and that his beloved will be humpbacked. The portentous words begin to take on relevance when Father Suryn is revealed to be the fifth priest to be dispatched by the church to a remote convent on the outskirts of town. A cloistered order of Ursuline nuns are reported to be possessed by demons, purportedly under the influence of an executed, morally flawed secular priest named Father Grandier. Earlier, the convent's Mother Superior, Jeanne Belcier (Lucyna Winnicka), commonly known as Mother Joan of Angels, had been instrumental in the charismatic Father Grandier's denunciation and subsequent burning at the stake for charges of using sorcery to subconsciously seduce her while she is asleep - an accusation that is substantiated by other nuns who randomly exhibit similar episodes of inexplicable, primal behavior. Nevertheless, despite Father Grandier's death, the bewitching of the nuns continues to resurface, manifesting through incomprehensible, often violent fits of convulsion, blasphemy, and hysteria. Father Suryn has been assigned to exorcise Mother Joan - the most tormented of the nuns - from the purported eight devils that have taken possession of her physical body in the belief that her salvation will expurgate the entire convent. However, as Father Suryn obsessively struggles to understand the root of Mother Joan's spiritual affliction, he becomes increasingly tormented with own conflicting emotions towards her seemingly irredeemable soul.

Based on the documented possession of Ursuline nuns that led to the burning of Father Urbain Grandier at the stake in Loudun, France in 1634 (that also served as the historical basis for Aldous Huxley's novel The Devils of Loudun, subsequently adapted for the screen by Ken Russell in The Devils), Mother Joan of Angels is a spare, visually rigorous, and profoundly disturbing exploration of faith, repression, fanaticism, and eros. Jerzy Kawalerowicz employs high contrast lighting, stark chiaroscuro imagery, austere landscapes, and minimal mise-en-scène that meticulously distills the narrative into its essential composition: the arid, desolate fields that lead to the convent and the site of Father Grandier's execution; the image of prostrate cloistered nuns in the chapel that is paralleled against images of birds in flight as Father Suryn and Mother Joan are sequestered to an attic room; the sound of footsteps in an underlit corridor as possessed nuns emerge towards the light, calling out to Father Suryn; the contrasted doppelgänger imagery of Father Suryn seeking guidance from a rabbi (also played by Voit) that is later repeated in his despondent, introspective monologue facing his obscured reflection in a mirror; the sublime final shot of a tolling church bell that intermittently occludes the daylight view from the tower. By exposing the uncertainty, repression, and moral ambiguity that exist beneath the abstinent, dogmatic ritual of institutional religion, Mother Joan of Angels serves as a provocative and haunting portrait of man's eternal spiritual struggle against the indefinable nature of evil, sin, and corporeal existence.

© Acquarello 2003. All rights reserved.


Review from Senses of Cinema by Jorge Didaco

Mother Joan of the Angels is a film against dogma. (...) It is a love story about a man and a woman who wear church clothes, and whose religion does not allow them to love each other. (...) The devils that possess these characters are the external manifestations of their repressed love.
- Jerzy Kawalerowicz

When in 1961 Mother Joan of The Angels won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, its director, Jerzy Kawalerowicz was already an established name of European cinema. After working as an assistant director, most notably on Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage (1948), he made his directorial debut in 1951 with Village Mill. His first films were, as Tadeusz Miczka suggests more generally of several Polish directors of the period, the works of an aggressive agitator who tried to convince those “'still not convinced' about the necessity of building the social order according to the Marxist-Leninist tenet.”

His perspective changed radically when, in 1955, he was appointed artistic director of the 'Kadr' production unit, the 'Polish film school,' which counted among its members fellow directors Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk and Tadeusz Konwicki. The political thaw, after Stalin's death, gave the opportunity to these directors to look at reality from new perspectives, free from the confines of Social-Realism. This enabled them to employ such elements as: poetic metaphor (especially symbol and allegory); dreams and memories; expressive formal visual techniques and sound textures; concepts of philosophical existentialism; re-interpretations of History (both recent or ancient); grotesque humor; ambivalence; adaptations of the work of, until then, banned writers; fragmented narratives and other strategies. The cinematic results of this expanding perspective, which gained the attention of critics world-wide who spoke of a 'national school,' were, among others, Wajda's Kanal (1957) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Munk's Eroica (1958) and Bad Luck (1960), and Kawalerowicz's Night Train (1959) and Mother Joan of the Angels (1961).

Mother Joan of the Angels is based on an actual episode known as “The Possession of Loudun,” in which at least seven Ursuline nuns showed evidence of being possessed by devils and a number of others were considerably affected by the presence of some palpable evil. The matters were dealt with by various specialized exorcists who conducted to the stake Father Urbain Grandier, a famous libertine, who was repeatedly seen in the convent's corridors seducing and fornicating with the nuns. Accused of witchcraft by a demon, who spoke through Mother Joan of the Angels' mouth, the priest was tortured and burnt alive in 1634. After Grandier's death the nuns continued to show signs of being possessed by 'evil' forces, such as hysteria and blasphemy, and other exorcists were sent in to combat the devils in Loudun; among them the mystic, Jean-Joseph Suryn. It is from this historical character that the film takes its perspective.

“The bell rings for those who are lost”
- local peasants

As the credits appear on the screen we see the fragile, lean figure of Father Jozef Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit) prostrated on the floor, saying a litany. From his sack he reaches for a scourge and a scant portion of bread. In these first images Kawalerowicz already employs his chief stylistic devices: characters who directly face the camera, achieving a disturbing intimacy with the spectator; high contrast black-and-white cinematography; mise en scène stripped to its essentials (making us feel, at times, as if we are watching one of Bergman's spiritual quests); off-screen sounds; and a mobile camera which drives and traps the actors on walls, corridors and corners, placing them in a continuous state of claustrophobia and inescapability.

Father Jozef has arrived at an inn to rest. In the tavern an earthy barmaid (Maria Chwalibóg) makes a prediction: he will meet a maiden who is a mother and his beloved will be hump-backed. This scene reminds me of the arrival of Andrei and the mystics at the tavern in Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966), a film which simultaneously confronts individual asceticism (economical gestures, silence, fasting) and collective corporality (dance, music, drink, food, sex).

“I don't know the world, so what can I say about it?”
- Father Jozef Suryn

On the way to the convent Father Jozef meets a local priest (Kazimierz Fabisiak) who has taken care of Father Grandier's children, who happen to play alongside the stake at which their father was burnt. (These desolate, almost lunar looking fields were actually filmed in a dump.) He meets with Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnicka) who is at first introduced almost surreptitiously walking towards the camera; she seems quiet, with precise gestures and pauses (Lucyna Winnicka, who gives an astounding performance in the role, was married to Kawalerowicz at the time). We begin, however, as Father Jozef does, to witness a slow and terrifying transformation: with eyes wide open and a mischievous smile, she asks a question: “What is a truth and what is a lie?” It is when she turns her back to the camera and a slow travelling shot accompanies her exit of the room that we perceive that something is terribly wrong and the transformation now complete. She laughs enticingly, begins to crawl on the walls, spits on father Jozef and leaves (on the blank walls) the mark of her hand. This sequence's atmosphere of dread, surprise and fantasy is entirely achieved through performance and direction.
The greatest set piece of the film is the exorcism scene. It begins with the nuns entering the frame one-by-one in a trance-like procession, as if floating on air, and ends with the juxtaposition of images of a flight of birds with the frenetic dance of the nuns agitating their white habits, symbolizing freedom and entrapment. In the middle everything is meticulously choreographed by Kawalerowicz to achieve a permanent state of doubt, repression, sin, guilt and pain, of love and loss in an unforgivable and soulless world.

“Every evil that men do towards other men, is nothing compared to the evil that dominates them”
- The Rabbi

Father Jozef's spiritual doubts, manifested in his constant self-flagellations, lead to a series of encounters with doubles, mirrors and shadows. He faces his reflection in a mirror twice and sees evil within: “Possess me,” he intones. Desolate and exhausted he looks for a rabbi (also played by Mieczyslaw Voit) for some guidance; the two men don't understand each other although the rabbi insists: “I am you and you are me.” Another important doubling in the film is played-out between Mother Joan and another nun, Sister Malgorzata (Anna Ciepielewska). Through this character (who is the only nun who seems not affected by the demons), Kawalerowicz comments on the role of women and their predicament: to face the severities of the cloister, or worse, become subjected to male power, a loveless or forced marriage, brutal sex, beating or abandonment.

“Being possessed pleases me (...) It is me who opens my soul to the demons”
- Mother Joan of the Angels

The film concludes with two more memorable encounters between Mother Joan and Father Jozef. In the first they are praying together, he in a state of beatific communion facing the cross, unaware of her corporeal presence, she facing him, looking at his crossed hands, the movement of his lips, the lines of his profile. This scene speaks concurrently of quiet transcendence and exquisite eroticism. Their last encounter happens when Mother Joan is put behind bars, isolated from the other nuns. Father Jozef kisses her hands, and in an act of love promises to assume all her sins by transferring guilt through a hideous crime that will irredeemably make him prisoner of his (and her) own demons (an act that has the same spiritual release and austere logic as that of a Bressonian character).
The final shot is of a bell occupying the entire frame. The sounds of Mother Joan and Sister Malgorzata crying are substituted for the bell's ringing. In this new world there is no certainty, we are all lost.


Review from MovieMail by Graeme Hobbs

Stark, sensual and unsettling, shot through with themes of voyeurism and curiosity and even featuring moments of satire, Mother Joan of the Angels is a hard film to pin down. Based on the documented story of the possession of a group of seventeenth century nuns, Kawalerowicz sets all the action in and between an inn and a convent that were purpose-built for the film in a unused dump. With nothing to intrude on the landscape but human presence and a blackened, burnt stake it’s a perfect setting for an existential examination of the conflict between desire and religion.

When Father Joseph arrives at the inn, his face of hardened innocence too careworn for beatitude, he is immediately tempted by mocking locals offering vodka which he drinks. He is also obviously conscious of the bodily presence of the woman who serves him, commencing the theme of eroticism, sometimes subdued, sometimes blatant, that infuses the film, and that along with the use of striking images and faces throughout serves to imprint scene after scene in your mind.

When he visits the convent and meets Mother Joan, his appeal to faith through shared prayer as a way out of her possession soon reveals just how far he is out of his depth and also how far he has to fall to be of any use. The unspoken attraction between Mother Joan and Father Joseph leads to some extraordinarily charged scenes, not least one that takes place when they are left alone in in the laundry room. Mother Joan slides the nun’s white robes along the poles on which they are drying, and then leans before the priest with the stripped poles gently swaying behind her. The film holds its breath for a moment.

The scenes of possession are equally as effectively portrayed, and are unsettling through the simplest means. At one point Mother Joan speaks the words of the devil while upside-down, the film framed tight to her face made strange. Later, Father Joseph has a conversation with his own dark side reflected in a mirror. It should be seen in a darkened room for its full chilling effect.

As well as depicting a conflict of love against religious dogma, Kawalerowicz also highlights the limited options for a woman to individualise herself in such a society and at such a time. One nun seeks it through the company of the inn and a tryst with the local squire. Mother Joan seeks it through demonic possession: ‘You only want me to be calm, colourless, small, to be just like any ordinary nun. I myself open my soul to the demons. But you want me to be like the thousands who have no aim on earth, you want to see me at prayer all day long, to see me eat beans all day. Do you promise me salvation for this? If one can’t be a saint, it’s better to be damned’

Bodily love between Mother Joan and Father Joseph is not possible, yet through his love for her he is willing to sacrifice himself for her salvation. The terrible price he convinces himself he must pay for relieving her of the demons reveals into just what strange shapes the church has twisted his understanding of desire.

Kawalerowicz’s film is a tragedy of religion obstructing genuine tenderness and love and he in fact speaks of it as his ‘film against dogma’. As such it’s easy to become immersed in the drama of the priest questioning how he should confront both the perceived evil of the convent and the force of his own desire, and forget the great cosmic force of laughter which is also at work in the film. The opening credits are shown over the prostrate body of Father Joseph. When they finish, he announces his presence with a cough (he’s been on the floor a long time, after all). He then unpacks his few possessions, hangs his whip on the wall after crossing himself with it, and as he heads for dinner, bumps his head on the door frame. It’s a scene of Buñuelian mirth; you’re not quite sure how much you should be laughing but you can be sure of a spluttering glee going on somewhere in the ether at the sight of humans doing such strange and tragic things with their lives.