The Exorcist

William Peter Blatty, who begat Stephen King, is one of the really great pisstakers in the cinema. This is Rosemary's Baby almost grown up, and lets you put a few cards on the table.

According to a superimposed title, it opens in Northern Iraq, where an archæologist-priest finds a small carven head, and examines a large statue. The sound of buzzing flies is heard, as in Lord of the Flies.

A title then indicates Georgetown, where an actress lives with her daughter. Gradually the girl is diagnosed with demonic possession, and the archæologist-priest is summoned to perform an exorcism.

With the passage of time and the establishment of a "No-Fly Zone" in Northern Iraq (and a search for Weapons of Mass Destruction), analysis has become faintly difficult-or has it?

Reportedly The Exorcist caused hysteria in more than one theater. Surprising as that is, there is a further report to the effect that Jack McGowran's death caused his character (a film director) to be written out as murdered by the possessed girl.

That sounds like a Borgesian invention, or anyway ben trovato, but there is much legendary material found emanating from sound stages and film locations, and perhaps a grain of truth.

A fine prophetic satire more easily grasped if movies are substituted for munitions, so you see the independent jobber introduced to high corporate machinations, and the unmanned vehicle operated via remote control by nerds, just as so often in real-life Hollywood today.

It's a question of arms dealing with hapless revolutionaries and witless reactionaries, and what with one thing and another, business is falling off.

Meanwhile, the new Luckup Peacemaker has its rollout. It's a superfast hoverdrone, controlled from a trailer by three nerds and a trainer, and not very well at that. In a scene akin to Blue Thunder, it attacks a newscopter and then blows up a Luckup storage tank.

The company's fortunes are, however, riding on the Peacemaker. Selling it to a South American dictator (El General) is the deal of the century.

It's a key film in the understanding of certain things relative to the change of management in Hollywood, the rise of marketing, etc.

Friedkin's comic technique is marvelous, and depends on being well-prepared and flawless in execution.

The last scene, for example, takes place at an international arms fair (Arms For Peace '84), and covers an airfield with booths and visitors and flying weaponry of all sorts.

The Guardian

Yuppies are like film critics, in that they're paid for really doing nothing, and the critics proved it in response to this film. Roger Ebert, in particular, made an ass of himself over the idea of trees in Los Angeles, for which he couldn't see the Angeles National Forest.

All filmmakers try to educate the critics, but that is wasted labor. John Schlesinger tried to educate the Yuppies in Pacific Heights, and Friedkin has a go here.

De Tocqueville thought it was remarkable that Americans drove their own carriages and answered their own doors. Anyway, servants require a great deal of skill to handle, as John Cromwell pointed out in Made for Each Other. Our Yuppie couple hires a nanny out of the Yellow Pages. She's a Druid with a coterie of wolves, and eventually she wants the baby.

Naturally, the critics wondered why anyone should care about Yuppies, who are a blind cult not worth the wind to rebuke, but that's why Friedkin is a great artist and the critics are hacks.

The glory of the technique is in the cinematography of the Yuppie manse (clean lines, sated colors, no Postmodern satire), and in the wonderfully gory special effects, which stint nothing and never exceed their purpose.

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002