The power of Christ impairs you

THE DEVIL AND FATHER AMORTH is Willia Friedkin’s exorcism documentary, a kind of return to the territory of his biggest hit. It has a very poor reputation, which is entirely earned. It’s still probably essential viewing for Friedkin fans, though — it illuminates his nature.

Both Friedkin and Father Gabriele Amorth are now deceased. This piece may seem rather disrespectful. What can I say, I’m a disrespectful guy. I respect Friedkin’s former youthful filmmaking skill, though.

My previous Friedkin doc experience was THE PEOPLE VS PAUL CRUMP, about a death-row prisoner. Friedkin got so into his crime reconstruction sequences, you could really see he was a fiction director manque. Oh, I’ve also seen his Fritz Lang interview. The grainy verite quality of those movies is a far cry from the slick digital look of this film, which I think is a bit of a problem for Friedkin. There’s no reason to shoot on 16mm or 35mm celluloid, it wouldn’t actually add “authenticity” to a modern film, but it’s more suited to the kind of atmosphere Friedkin relishes.

Friedkin was also struggling, in TPVPC, against the strictures of the documentary form — the ethical strictures. Unsatisfied with his inmate protagonist’s “performance,” he slapped the poor guy around to produce tears, a trick he’d repeat with the real priest he cast in THE EXORCIST as Father Dyer. Making me wonder if Hurricane Billy got into film directing purely as an excuse to slap people.

This issue with truth, documentary truth (setting aside the sadism), comes into play in TD&FA, big time. Much of the film is a fairly sober documentary, though the questions Friedkin asks are designed to produce “spooky” answers from neurologists and psychologists, rather than to dig deep into what they really think. There’s a very long couple of sequences which are Friedkin’s footage of a “real” exorcism. They seem to go on even longer than the rite in his fiction film. I get the distinct impression Friedkin has tampered with the subject’s “demon voice” to make it scarier, more like Mercedes McCambridge, though.

In Friedkin’s original William Peter Blatty horrorshow, we get a lot about how the Vatican is reluctant to perform exorcisms unless all “perfectly rational explanations” have been exhausted. Not so much, here. The late Father Amorth is seen treating a woman who, in interview, evades Friedkin’s questions about her psychological and physical health, and says that possession can often masquerade as more normal complaints. One wonders who told her that — but one doesn’t wonder too hard, because it was probably Father Amorth.

It’s weird how much the film has the dated look of TV reportage. The Friedkin who made CRUMP was trying to break out of the medium into cinema. The older, fatter huckster ambling placidly through TD&FA is retreating into a cheaper form where the illusion of veracity provides cover. Friedkin worked hard to make THE EXORCIST both horrific and disturbing and “real” — objecting to all the freeze-frames and nouvelle vague tricks Blatty attempted to put in the screenplay. Here, the claim that all we’re shown and told is real is the only basis we might have for being creeped out.

Friedkin affects to take this stuff seriously, but still pours scary movie music over everything — even an establishing shot of a hospital, and a CGI rendering of a tumorous brain get this melodrama treatment (Fiona points out that THE EXORCIST has no score and very little music). And to give the story of the possessed woman a climax, he tells us about a meeting that took place in an Italian church where she screamed, crawled around, and personally threatened him with death. Since he mysteriously didn’t bring his camera to the meeting (which was only taking place in furtherance of his documentary, so… why not?), what we get is a ludicrous “reconstruction” — a lot of shakicam shots of the church interior intercut with closeups from the exorcism scene, all tinted spooky green.

The question of documentary ethics again comes into play throughout — is the “possessed” woman mentally ill and therefore incapable of informed consent? (this bothered Fiona) — did this offscreen freak-out really occur (it definitely didn’t), and if it didn’t, did she consent to Friedkin inventing it? (this baffled me) — and if she did, what does this tell us about her sincerity, her rationality, the veracity of the whole enterprise?

The woman is referred to only as Christina, but is described as a lawyer living in a small village, so it ought to be easy for any researcher to find out if she’s an actor. By naming her hometown and showing her face, the movie makes a mockery of any claim of anonymity.

I didn’t feel I really got to know Amorth well in the documentary, which is a bit of a failing, but then I don’t really understand priests. Still, when Father A is sticking his (obscenely red) tongue out at the devil, I take leave to wonder… maybe it’s really directed at the suckers?

Page Seventeen: The Last Key

For Halloween I have selected seven extracts from seven page seventeens from seven books of a sinister nature found skulking on my shelves or couching at the door. For some reason, most of the interesting passages discovered were about clothing or food. Illustrations by Mervyn Peake, which also feature food and clothing, or their absence,

‘We’ll keep you informed,’ says Lister. ‘All you have to do is stay there till we tell you not to.’ He hangs up. ‘Sister Barton is worried,’ he says. ‘Him in the attic is full of style this evening and likely to worsen as the night draws on. Another case of intuition.’

At that she said: ‘Order supper for us both,’ and I leave you to imagine with what satisfaction I carried out her bidding, so exalted that I scarcely deigned to glance at the landlady or the servants. Impatiently I waited for the moment that would bring me to her once more. Supper was served, we sat facing each other. For the first time in quite a while I regaled myself with a good meal and a charming sight: indeed, it seemed to me that she became more beautiful with every minute.

He grinned and said he agreed, but I don’t think he was happy, for one thing I’m not what you call a snappy dresser and they were used to dinner jackets and off the shoulder dresses, or at least a decent lounge suit. But corduroy trousers and roller neck jersey is my stock in trade, for a writer isn’t looked up to these days if he dresses like everyone else, and damn it all, my money is as smart as the next man’s. I carried my drinks on a tray the barman gave me to a table a little way from the bar, and after emptying the first glass, I sat back and took in the scenery.

A group of young men were strolling by, special hair-cuts, white shorts, boasting suits. They talked loudly, impressing each other. They were less intent on looking for a girl than on impressing themselves on the world, on stirring things up. In this they looked dangerous. But they were in control. They were not like Baynes, edging by dull against their brightness, a mud-coloured shadow of a man with the moon in him.

When I reached the terrace of Furnivaux it was nearly breakfast-time. The hall door, half open, revealed a vista of ancient pictures. As I knocked there timidly, an ancient serving-man in fawn livery appeared. Something, perhaps my resemblance to my father, amazed him, and he bade me enter at once.

‘We went at once into the dining-room, as Lucy was hungry; and she took off her hat and laid it on a side-table: she said the close fit of it made her head ache. The cutlets had been misrepresented: they were lukewarm; but Lucy made a good meal off them and the fruit-tat which followed, very much at her leisure. Heaven knows I would not have grudged her so much as a mouthful; but that luncheon was an ordeal I cannot readily forget.

Seeing that I was abashed, Bella Barclay offered me a cup of tea. Her tea-cosy was a queer obus of straw and silk tortuously covered with wooden beads of various shapes and colors. It made the teapot look drunk. Quick to catch my glance she said, “Ah, that. That was not meant for a tea-cosy, my dear, but for a hat. Grosjean designed it exclusively for me in 1936. I am not in sympathy with male milliners. A man should make roads and bridges, not hats for actresses. This hat came in a box, and the box was in a green paper bag. I was having tea at the time. So I put the hat on the teapot to keep my tea warm, twisted the green paper bag into an intriguing shape and wore it with an emerald. For a week after that, women wore paper hats. You can put that in your article if you like.”

Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark; The New Melusina by Johann von Goethe, from Great Tales of Terror from Europe and America, edited by Peter Haining; The Thing by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, from The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories, selected by Herbert van Thal; The Man with the Moon in Him by William Sansom, from The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories; The Stone Dragon by R. Murray Gilchrist, from A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread; The Death Mask by H.D. Everett, from The Crimson Blind & Other Stories; The Shady Life of Annibal by Gerald Kersh, from Men Without Bones and Other Haunting Inhabitants.

The Sunday Intertitle: Pursued by a Bear

THE BEAR’S WEDDING deals with maternal influence, the Victorian idea that the experiences of a pregnant woman could affect her offspring — a sort of anticipation of modern epigenetics, but a discredited idea that’d make a good subject for Dario Argento (extra Y chromosome causes psychopathy; the murder victim’s eye records the last thing they saw; he loves his outmoded medical theories).

See also THE ELEPHANT MAN, in which Lynch chooses to assume that John (really Joseph) Merrick believes the (fictitious) showman’s account of his origin story (“Struck down in the fourth month of her maternal condition by a rampaging African elephant…”) His family did seem to accept this explanation, per Wikipedia.

TBW (Medvezhya svadba) is a 1925 Soviet historical pageant in which the protagonist’s mother gets traumatized by a bear which kills her husband, and he grows up with wild, violent moods “when the forest is full of noise.”

I’m struck by the resemblance to CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF here. But COTW is one of those weird Hammer films that begins decades early and takes forever to reach its actual storyline (see also the pathetic CREATURES THE WORLD FORGOT). TBW brings its bipolar protag within the first nine minutes, and demonstrates that this approach CAN work if you’re reasonably brisk about it.

Konstantin Eggert and Vladimir Gardin directed, very effectively, and the production design is rich and atmospheric. I love the huge bed.

This is how the filmmakers show the young hero, as a boy, being influenced by the malign bible stories he’s told:

Really good!

Elsewhere, admittedly, the filmmakers’ attempts at a montage style falters slightly because the shots are too wide, too neutral, to do the Eisenstein thing, which requires intense compositions carefully designed to clash dramatically, each with the other. This is just a bunch of long shots cut unpleasantly fast. I appreciate tight pacing, but the footage and story often seem more suited to a slow, atmospheric approach.

A real coup de cinema — our hero comes to his senses and realises he’s mauled his loved one to death — he retreats — the extremely long bedclothes wrapped about him are gradually pulled away from the slain, woman, revealing the tragedy, as he sinks into a dark and blurry background, a vivid picturization of the internal horror.

The film is full of striking visual ideas. The requisite torch-wielding villagers are portrayed first through a sedate darkened archway, but as more join the hint, the screen is filled with flames and becomes a hellish abstract.

Frequently the film achieves this — not quite enough to reach Eisensteinian montage, but enough to be inspirational — a modern filmmaker could steal these effects and look good doing it.

An exciting film which plays like a commie Hammer flick — and illuminates the ways in which Hammer films, with all those depraved aristos, are open to sinister left-wing interpretations, heh heh.