DANCING WITH THE DEVIL

Fifty years later, The Exorcist remains peerless in horror

- GAUTAM CHINTAMANI

The year that The Exorcist came out—1973—was strange, to say the least. The US was failing to come to terms with the trauma of the 1960s and early 1970s—the breaking of American traditions with the Vietnam War, the advent of the counterculture, and the adoption of an alternative approach to just about everything from science to religion and, most importantly, cinema. The 1960s finally brought the curtain down on ‘Old Hollywood’. No longer were stars ruling the roost; relative unknowns like Roman Polanski and Dennis Hopper were now defining the zeitgeist.

Amongst the younger crop, The Exorcist’s director, William Friedkin, generated great interest for a host of reasons. He had won an Oscar for best director for The French Connection (1971), and could not care less for authority, a trait that did not win him any favours with the big Hollywood studios.