Everything in the Exorcist film is intentional. I had no idea what the effect of any of this stuff would be, but I can tell you that it's all planned. This is as planned a film as I've ever made. There are a lot of things in almost every film that come about through improvisation or through luck. A large part of the chase scene in The French Connection actually "just happened". But there's nothing that "just happened" in The Exorcist. Everything is planned.
- William Friedkin
Spoilers follow.
I've seen this movie before, sometime when I was a kid. I remember it being a movie about two priests performing an exorcism on a young girl possessed by the devil. Rewatching it now, in the form of the 132 minute director's cut, I discover that part doesn't start until 100 minutes in. It's preceded by material that isn't obviously purposeful. An archeological dig in Iraq. A single mother seeking a cure for her daughter's unusual illness. A priest dealing with the loss of his mother and a crisis of faith. It's a weirdly cozy watch, despite the undercurrent of dread. It's a slow burn, but never tedious. You can always track your proximity to the climactic exorcism scene by the steady escalation of Regan's behavior.
All the setup comes together in a not totally obvious way. I think the greatest effect of it is simply to provide a baseline mundane reality against which the demonic possession scenes stand in stark contrast. Father Merrin's arrival is both climactic and anticlimactic. After an awesome exorcism scene, he has a heart attack offscren and dies. Somehow, it has the effect for me of making his brief presence in the film even more portentous and mythical.
I watched this movie a couple days ago and I can't get it out of my head. There are mysteries to the film that cannot be dispelled simply by reading about its production, because these elements were included by pure intuition. The climactic exorcism scene is a spellbinding triumph of acting, lighting and special effects. It didn't occur to me while watching that Friedkin had a refrigeration unit installed so the actors' breath would be visible, but of course he did. This is one of those movies where I could gladly soak up every tidbit about its development, from the miraculous casting of industry nobodies that completely nailed their roles to the numerous incidents that plagued its production, but above all I could wonder foverer about the world onscreen, that world where demons are real and catholic priests are film noir detectives, meeting in seedy bars and emerging from cabs at night silhouetted against streetlights.
I think Friedkin is becoming one of my favorite directors, and this might've dethroned To Live and Die in L.A. as my favorite of his. I'll get on Cruising, Bug and Killer Joe ASAP and I'm eager to discover if there are any hidden gems among his more maligned films.
