The Demon
Titanus: A Family Chronicle of Italian Cinema
May 22 - 31, 2015
A love-crazed girl is taken for a witch by fanatical villagers in Brunello Rondi’s profoundly unnerving treatise on compulsion and superstition, a clear forerunner to The Exorcist.
Brunello Rondi, best known for his contributions to Fellini scripts (La Dolce Vita, 8½), makes his sophomore directorial effort with this profoundly unnerving treatise on compulsion and superstition. In a southern mountain village mired in religious fanaticism, peasant girl Purificazione (Daliah Lavi) loves Antonio (Frank Wolff) obsessively. When he chooses to marry someone else, she visits a curse upon him, inciting the townspeople to believe she’s a witch possessed by the devil. The film is a clear forerunner to The Exorcist (a crazed Lavi performs the infamous “spider walk” a decade before Linda Blair), but Rondi leaves us to decide if she’s bedeviled by supernatural forces or mental illness. Lavi’s delirious performance is abetted by Carlo Bellero’s stunning black-and-white photography.
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