The Exorcist
Directed by William Friedkin. Written by William Peter Blatty.

"It may be that the times we live in have prepared us for this film."¹

The Exorcist is still regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made, twenty-five years after its original release. In its time, the film outsold both The Sound of Music and Gone With the Wind to become the most successful film to date². It won two Academy Awards, from ten nominations, for adapted screenplay and sound. William Friedkin said in 1991 of the film's success:

"I don't think the mood of the times had anything whatsoever to do with the success of The Exorcist ... I have read some really wonderful theories ... [but] they're nothing to do with anything we intended."³

However, intended or not, it is surprising how many of the 'wonderful theories' actually fit this film - from metaphors for puberty to perhaps the most bizarre, a homosexual fantasy⁴. It is almost certain that there was something beyond a great horror story that pulled so many people away from their television screens, filled with the shocking-enough Vietnam pictures, and into the cinemas to see The Exorcist, and that the themes explored by the film, along with the emotions it delivers, do indeed closely reflect those of the time at which the film was released. Mark Kermode writes,

"By late 1973, the presidency was on the brink of collapse, the walking wounded from Vietnam were everywhere in evidence, and the only thing America was exporting with any success was paranoia."⁵

Vietnam, Watergate, the New Left, Woodstock, and even NASA's space program - all can be spotted in The Exorcist. But perhaps the single most important shot in the film is the last one - that of a lone man standing at the top of a lethal flight of steps, looking down and then walking away quietly. The man is Father Dyer, the friend of Damien Karras who sacrifices himself for the life of a young girl. What is felt in the final shot is exactly the mood of the time that Friedkin tries to dissociate his film from. It is America looking back on its violent past (in the film, the possession and exorcism of a young girl; in America, the invasion of and retreat from Vietnam) and then turning away, refusing to go back, continuing on with life.

The film deals mainly with the loss of faith - the central character being Damien Karras - and the search for a reason to believe in something that would give hope. This is perhaps what most Americans wanted at the time - young men were being shot without reason, the president was lying on network television, the children were rioting in the streets - and yet William Peter Blatty would say of this film,

"I wanted to give people hope and stimulate their religious beliefs."⁶

This film was about, as Mark Kermode says, the destruction of "everything that was considered wholesome and good about the fading American Dream - the home, the family, the church, and, most shockingly, the child."⁷ In other words, this film targeted everything that was left - but still, Blatty hoped, delivered a very positive message.

We are given reasons for Karras' loss of faith - the death of his mother being the important one. Karras' mother is described by Mark Kermode as "the stoically stubborn immigrant who has made her roots in New York and is 'not going no place'"⁸. The mother's accent reveals her roots and makes clear that she represents the past - one of those who came to America searching for the American Dream. When she dies, Karras confides in a friend (Dyer), saying, "I should have been there, I wasn't there, I should have been there," and this could resonate strongly for audiences who had lived through the sixties taking all manner of drugs so they, too, were 'not there' to witness the passing of the American Dream.

An important novel published in 1971 formed a part of the same phase in popular entertainment as The Exorcist - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson. In it, he puts forward the same idea of America's attitude in the sixties compared to the seventies:

"We're all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fuelled the sixties ... this was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling 'consciousness expansion' without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait."⁹

Novels like this, and films like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch and The Exorcist, were a wake-up call to reality. All of these films contain deaths - but only in The Exorcist do (at least some of) the protagonists survive. Father Karras, Father Merrin, and the film director Burke Dennings, along with Karras' mother, are the only people to die - all of them, except Dennings, for a reason. The mother represents the death of the American Dream and is finally Karras' motivation for saving the young girl. Merrin dies in order that Karras might make this sacrifice and complete the exorcism. And Karras dies for Regan MacNeil, the girl. One could argue that the death of Burke Dennings, a film director - a maker of dreams (however much his character throws that into doubt) - signifies also the death of dreams.

The link between Karras' mother and the young girl is made very clear most blatantly in the final exorcism scenes, when he visualises her in the girl's place on the bed - but also, as is pointed out by Mark Kermode, earlier on when Karras visits his mother in hospital:

"As Karras enters the ward, the patients become agitated, his presence seeming to stir some inner demons within them [... a scene repeated in Regan's bedroom]"¹⁰

It is clear what is being said here. Karras feels that by saving the young girl - a child, representing America's future - he can redeem the errors of the past, the death of his mother - representing the American Dream. It relates to Vietnam, perhaps, saying no more soldiers should be sent to die, but more fully it links to the situation at home, in America, where a major problem was with children rebelling, rioting (often over Vietnam).

The now infamous scenes that punctuate the girl's torment begin at a party held by Chris MacNeil, the girl's mother. A lot of important things happen in this sequence (including a confrontation between the racist Burke Dennings and the MacNeil's Swiss housekeeper), but the most important single line is spoken by Regan as she walks into the living room in her nightgown and says to an astronaut, "You're gonna die up there."

This single line is perhaps overshadowed by the act that follows, but if a true start to the events of The Exorcist is to be pin-pointed, it is here. The astronaut, especially in the late-60s and early-70s, was representative of 'what was left' of the American Dream. In the Vietnam years, perhaps the greatest thing to happen to America was the moonwalk by Neil Armstrong. Surely the astronaut's presence here, at an actress' party, must be intended as significant. In this scene, 'what is left' is threatened by a child. Only three years previously the mission Apollo 13 had failed dramatically to land, contributing to the deterioration of America's faith in itself. It is perhaps also an important scene because prior to this point, the film is fairly slow. There is a prologue in Iraq (during which, no doubt, there were plenty of people asking if they were in the right film), and then some drama involving a priest and his mother, shot in a documentary style.

This slow build to the horror was very effective. For while many of the audience had seen Easy Rider, The Wild Bunch and the others, they had never seen anything like The Exorcist - because while this film was realistic, like the other films, and based apparently on fact, like the other films, as William Friedkin says of it,

"It is a realistic film about inexplicable events."¹¹

Friedkin references 2001: A Space Odyssey as being another such film, and one which inspired him while making The Exorcist. This type of film was clearly something that America needed. With Vietnam and other circumstances of the time, people wanted some kind of hope, but they were not yet ready for something like Star Wars or E.T. They were not ready to suspend their disbelief - and so a story about the devil himself had to be delivered to the sceptics who would not trust anything until they had the facts. The Exorcist surely was a success because it delivered the 'facts' so well. As Bob McCabe writes,

"Blatty asked nothing of his [audience] that his characters didn't have to undergo first."¹²

It takes two painful medical examinations and finally for her twelve year old daughter to desecrate a religious artefact in the most grotesque way imaginable before Chris MacNeil goes to a priest. The film does not assume anything of its audience, hence the drama is believable - everybody is convinced. This honesty must have been appreciated by Americans, for whom even the news on television about Nixon was subject to doubt.

The Exorcist marked the peak of realistic films and the first sign of the blockbuster phase (at present still unfinished) that would take off with Jaws. It most certainly ended that style of film associated with the early sixties - the comedies of Blake Edwards, for example, many of which were in fact written by William Peter Blatty¹³. Blatty describes the background to his writing The Exorcist:

"Motion picture comedies were out of favour, at least in Hollywood, and I could not convince anybody to hire me for a project that wasn't comedy . . . I thought, this is the perfect time to write. And so I began . . ."¹⁴

He got more than he bargained for. By trying to end his own comedy career, Blatty destroyed entirely the screwball comedy format, which he had virtually invented, for at least a decade. Such was the impact of The Exorcist.

At the first preview of the film, at the Director's guild preview theatre, an audience made up of general public and executives left in silence, not having applauded, as the end credits rolled. The publicist for Warner Brothers recalls his job of dealing with the concerned people at the studio, who were already considering not releasing the film. He told them,

"Fellas, I don't know what happened tonight. I saw the same film. All I can tell you is the other 900 people who saw this film are all congregated outside this theatre talking about it."¹⁵

Again, this was repeated around the country. Apart from the well-documented faintings, vomitings, 'copycat' incidents, the film made people react as they had never reacted to film before. However, William Peter Blatty still is concerned that their reaction in many cases was wrong:

"Many people, to this day, interpret The Exorcist as a downer."¹⁶

The problem that Blatty sees is in the ending - the final shot - which, in the final released cut - is far more open and 'down' than in the original cut, which featured a dialogue between the surviving priest, Father Dyer, and the detective William Kinderman¹⁷ (Blatty's favourite character, for the most part excised from the script because of similarities with television's Columbo¹⁸). In this lost scene, Blatty suggests that Father Karras lives on somehow in the relationship between these two men by repeating a discussion about films seen earlier in the film. The ending mirrors Casablanca and is, without need for interpretation, 'up'. Friedkin cut it, because it did not fit his vision:

"I really thought that that ending was trying to tell the audience what the film means."¹⁹

As it stands, the ending is very open. The answers are still in the film, but the final lonely shot with the quiet Tubular Bells playing over it, drowned out by the blasting end credits music, flings people out unresolved. Clearly with the unfinished conflict in Vietnam, and the unfinished Watergate hearings, both of which were taking a down-turn, this inconclusive ending was the way to go. And, indeed, people did interpret it as a 'downer'. People (even the head of Warner Brothers²⁰) thought the devil won. Blatty puts the reaction down to "shell shock"²¹ from the horrific scenes that precede the final battle. However, William Friedkin puts it best when (ironically) trying to make clear why the film is positive:

"I've always said that you get from the film what you bring to it . . . if you think the world is bad, you look at The Exorcist and say '. . . the world is bad . . .' . . . if you think . . . the world is full of hope and potential . . . you take that from it . . ."²²

Of course, seventies audiences did not know what to take from it. But had the message been preached (as it is in the original ending) the film would not have been such a success. As it was, audiences respected the film's honesty and saw that the answers were there - and however shaken by it, they would return again and again trying to find those answers.

The Exorcist takes the most sceptical of viewers and shows it a believable world. When the unnatural happens, heavy string music does not start to play - there are no scantily clad teenagers walking through dark rooms brandishing knives. The killer of this 'horror movie' seems to be a little girl. William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin respect the fact that the audience knows it is a film, and expect respect themselves. Then they take the audience through a process of explaining why this possession could not possibly be fake. From science, with gruelling hospital scenes, through to psychology, a suspenseful, jolting hypnotism scene, and finally a thrilling, effects filled exorcism finale. The ending is set up not by a Hitchcockian 'macguffin', but by a documentary-like progression through a thoroughly believable story. The religious characters of the film - Merrin and Karras - are not the archetypal God-loving priests. Merrin is an archaeologist; Karras, a psychologist who admits, "I think I've lost my faith". They have reason to doubt and reason to believe. This basis in reality, and finally the refusal to provide a happy, resolved ending, make The Exorcist a very important film of its time. Intended or not, the resonance of certain images and incidents in the film with its audience and its unprecedented success show that people responded to the film as a product not of Hollywood, but of themselves.

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