Exorcist, The (1973)
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Summary:
The One True Horror Film |
In 1973, a comedy writer and a car-chase director got together to tell
a psychological mystery, based on an actual incident the writer heard
of when he was in divinity school.
Yeah, sounds like a real thrill-a-minute.
Every studio passed. When Warner finally gave in, the writer/producer
seemed to go out of his way to do everything wrong. He hired priests to
play themselves. He hired a 40-year-old to be an 80-year-old. The
female lead went to a virtual unknown, and the male lead was given to a
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who originally thought he was being
hired to write the script. The professionally composed score was
literally thrown out the window, and replaced by bits and pieces of
obscure music. A maniacal director was allowed to torture and terrorize
the cast. A barefoot illiterate peasant was hired to do the sound
effects.
During the first showing, the producers were certain they'd blown it
when a large part of the audience walked out.
They debated whether to release the film at all, and some studio chiefs
considered it an obscene embarrassment. But as they left the theater,
they noticed something odd.
Every single member of the audience, including the walk- outs, was
still in the parking lot. Not one person had driven home. They were
gathered in a huge mob, discussing and debating and arguing about what
they'd just seen.
In the following months, the results were unprecedented. In New York,
the joke was that you had to get in line in New Jersey. Today, we would
call them "Star Wars" crowds.
But "The Exorcist" came first.
Like "Citizen Kane" or "2001: A Space Odyssey", it is one of those rare
moments in film history when someone does something totally different,
yet somehow, by luck or sixth sense or divine guidance, seems to know
exactly what to do.
Right from the start, the off-rhythm pounding of the Iraqi blacksmiths
gets under our skin, a beautifully subtle way of suggesting something
is not right with the world's heartbeat.
The indecipherable right-to-left Arabic writing also plays a role here,
a relatively strange sight to American audiences, and a prelude to the
backwards speech, backwards heads, and backwards nature in scenes to
come. Reversal and conflict are constantly reinforced thematically,
through juxtapositions of incompatible images: the sacred and the
profane, the light and the dark, the natural and the unnatural. But
it's not all subtlety. The prologue sequence ends with a heroic shot
straight out of High Noon, as the exorcist suddenly finds himself face
to face with the statue of a grinning, reptilian demon. Human flesh
against indestructible stone.
Then a marvelous transition. Old to new. From Iraq to Georgetown. A
movie actress switches on a light in a dark bedroom. And the sound of
rats in the attic, even though the home's caretaker insists quite
believably, "No rats." Scampering rats. Shrieking gulls. Lions
devouring prey.
All the sound effects are chosen with a merciless attention to human
instinctive psychology. They set the stage for evil.
Science alongside superstition. As a young girl becomes progressively
sicker, her behavior ever more bizarre, there seems little difference
between a medical laboratory, with its bloodletting and its whirling
x-ray machines, and the rituals of a witchdoctor. We meet our young
hero, the suffering priest/psychiatrist, further blurring the line
between magic and reality. And he brings in yet another paradoxical
combination: faith, and the loss of faith. By the way, his name is
Karass, which is Greek for "cross". At least I think it is. Anyway, it
should be.
The film's most powerful oxymoron is undoubtedly the most shocking,
most horrible scene in the history of cinema. It makes one inescapable
point. This is not a disease. This is not a dream. This is not even a
lower-echelon evil spirit from some haunted house movie. Only the Devil
can do this.
An interesting sidebar. During this scene, Ellen Burstyn is supposed to
be sent flying by a vicious backhand blow. Of course, this was before
the era of digital wizardry, so she had to be physically strapped into
a harness and then pulled across the room. As the rehearsals wore on,
she warned director Friedkin that she was starting to get hurt.
Friedkin agreed that the next take would be more gentle. He lied.
He covertly instructed the special effects designer to "let her have
it." She went flying like a rag doll, screaming in agony as she thudded
to the hard wooden floor. And Friedkin, the consummate artist, dollied
in to get that last close-up, before calling the paramedics. Now that's
what movies are all about.
This movie is what movies are all about.
