The infamous fictional account of demonic possession had some historical antecedents as Blatty based his tale on the well documented 1949 case of a 14 year old boy from Maryland. Blatty himself was a deeply religious man and a student at the Jesuit Georgetown University when he became acquainted with the subject matter of exorcism. Although he wanted to use the facts of the actual case and create a non-fiction work, Blatty could not get any official sanction from the people involved. Blatty’s eventual script attracted director William Friedkin, then riding on a critical and popular hit with The French Connection. The plot concerned a single mother (Ellen Burstyn) increasingly distraught at her pubescent daughter’s change in behaviour. As this behaviour becomes aggressive and irrational, she seeks help from doctors who put the daughter (Linda Blair) through graphic and painful medical tests. Meanwhile, a priest (Jason Miller), a psychiatric counsellor for the Georgetown University, is starting to lose his faith, feeling responsible for the cruel fate of his mother. When Burstyn has exhausted all hope and her daughter’s physical condition has deteriorated to an indescribable state, she contacts Miller.
As a showdown between good and evil, the film is allegorical, stark and unrelenting; but within its expert sense of manipulation is a startling depiction of doubt and despair, both of Burstyn and Miller, as well as the decade’s most striking visualization of fears of impending generational conflict. The loss of control, and its relation to spiritual malaise, is central to this film and the source of physical, religious and psychological horror. Miller’s crisis is one of faith: as his belief in a powerful and caring God is eroding, so too he needs this possession encounter to confront his own personal demon – despair. Perhaps if Miller can save Blair he can redeem himself for his perceived failure. In this respect, the absence of the “father” in Blair’s domestic situation is telling – a void that enables the demon to operate. Burstyn’s own crisis is her inability to relate to her own daughter: she needs to believe that her daughter has been invaded by an alien presence. All have recourse to spiritual, irrational belief when the rational world around them systematically fails their needs. Religious belief may be a last recourse but the film champions it, however cynical may be the idea that it is through evil and self-doubt (rather than love) that such belief finds its validation. read more