Mother Joan of the Angels

Mother Joan of the Angels (1961)

Matka Joanna od Aniołów

Maybe the trouble is not demons, but the absence of angels.

A Polish priest arrives at a convent hoping to save the Mother Superior who is supposedly possessed by eight demons.

Date of release
1961-02-09
TMDB
7.5 / 10 (124)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Drama, Horror
Director
Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Casting

Interesting facts

Mother Joan of the Angels is a 1961 Polish religious horror art film on demonic possession, directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz, based on a novella of the same title by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, loosely based on the 17th century Loudun possessions. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival.

Background

Mother Joan of the Angels is very loosely based on the real-life outbreak of mass hysteria that occurred in the French town of Loudun in 1634 when a convent of Ursuline nuns, led by the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne of the Angels, became obsessed with a handsome, womanising priest, Urbain Grandier.

Unlike Ken Russell's more famous film The Devils (1971) – which depicts Grandier's trial and climaxes with his execution – Mother Joan of the Angels depicts the events that occurred subsequent to Grandier's death (with "Father Garniec," the film's version of Grandier, mentioned only in passing).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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