Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6—January 31,1974
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Film Classifications
A - Section I - Morally Unobjectionable for General Patronage
A - Section II - Morally Unobjectionable for Adult*, Adolescents
A - Section m - Morally Unobjectionable for Adults
A — Section IV — Morally Unobjectionable for Adults, Reservations
B - Morally Objectionable in Part for All
C — Condemned
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THE EXORCIST (Warners) .. .Brilliant
film-making, questionable theology (at best),
and NOT for the easily shocked!
If any proof is needed that by and large
motion pictures today have ceased being a
general audience entertainment medium,
William Friedkin’s film of William Peter
Blatty’s novel, THE EXORCIST, offers a
crash course in what is now an established
fact. However much one may regret the
paucity of films intended for the mass
audience, one must realistically recognize this
development and evaluate the products of it
in the proper context.
In this light THE EXORCIST poses a
peculiar set of problems. The subject matter
of the film deals in loose fictional terms with
what appeared to have been an actual instance
of demonic possession that occurred in rural
Maryland in 1949, in the course of which a
Catholic priest received Church permission to
attempt an exorcism that seemingly freed the
youngster in question from demonic
influences. Modern knowledge of
psychosomatic disorders will explain why the
Church in recent times has rarely approved
the use of the rite of exorcism. On theological
grounds some theologians would question the
very possibility of possession itself, especially
in the case of an innocent, as being
incompatible with redemption. Nevertheless
there remains in traditional Catholic
theology the firm belief that what we call the
devil does exist and, short of compelling a
human being to ultimate acts against his free
will, self-destruction for instance, this power
is capable of some form of human possession.
This subject is, therefore, a valid one for
serious film treatment. At the same time, the
current fascination with the occult and devil
worship, that seems to have its origins in some
sick, faddist trends in contemporary society,
suggests enormous possibilities for exploiting
this quite sensitive material.
Friedkin’s film dabbles in all these
elements. Like the novel, the movie is poor
theology but gripping entertainment that, if
not subjected to serious analysis, may present
the mature viewer of strong stomach with
some salutary reflections on the nature of
good and evil, matter arid spirit, religious
belief, and the limits of science when
confronted with spiritual forces that
somehow affect and influence human life.
The candid manner in which Friedkin treats
his subject will undoubtedly - and
understandably -- repulse other moviegoers,
for whom no defense of this film’s visuals and
language is possible.
The story deals with a 12-year-old girl who,
while in Washington with her agnostic
actress-mother on a film assignment, begins to
experience a horrifying series of mental and
physical states that defy scientific explanation
despite intensive medical and psychiatric
examination. As the child’s seizures increase
in frequency and extent, a statue in a nearby
church is desecrated and the actress’ film
director dies under particularly strange
circumstances. In desperation the woman
turns to a young priest, a man himself going
through a religious crisis, who in consultation
with his ecclesiastical superiors is finally given
the aid of a recognized exorcist, an elderly
priest-archeologist who has a fatal heart
attack while performing the rites of exorcism.
The priest, alone with the girl, summons the
demonic spirit who enters his body and, it
appears, flings him to his death.
The featured roles, Ellen Burstyn as the
actress, Max von Sydow as the exorcist, Jason
Miller as the troubled priest, and Linda Blair
as the possessed girl, as well as the supporting
characters, Jack MacGowran as the film
director and Lee J. Cobb as a detective
investigating the mysterious deaths, are all
convincingly portrayed within the otherwise
fantastic events that make up the story. THE
EXORCIST is, just the same, a director’s film
that relies less on character development than
on special effects, make-up, camera work,
editing and lighting for its creation of mood
and credibility. In these production areas
Friedkin displays a control of his craft which,
in thjs rather ephemeral genre of the horror
film, is a unique example of effective film
making.
This, unfortunately, is the only
achievement of significance that can be
credited to the film. As an attempt to recreate
in cinematic terms an experience of diabolic
possession, Friedkin has relied so heavily on
the blasphemous juxtaposition of perverse
sexual reference and sacred religious symbols
that his film is inevitably open to the criticism
of gross sensationalism, as indeed was Blatty’s
novel. For most audiences, despite the almost
supercilious reverence accorded the roles of
the clergy, the ancient rituals of exorcism will
appear like so much religious mumbo jumbo.
Granted the superficial characterizations, the
obvious manipulation of plot and, perhaps
most critical, in theological terms the film’s
untenable resolution which has one believing
that either the devil kills the priest or he, in
an act of heroism, commits suicide, THE
EXORCIST amounts to little more than an
expensive horror movie in the escapist
entertainment vein. Of such films one asks
little but that they be suitable for a mass
audience. And this, THE EXORCIST
certainly is not. {A-IV)
JIMI HENDRIX (Warners) died in 1971 in
Britain Hi the company of a groupie and
owing to the effects, according to the
autopsy, of inhaling his own vomit. Not so
inspiring an end for a 27-year-old who had
been a brilliant, meteroic superstar in the
glittering constellation of rock music. This
unusual and occasionally profound
documentary by Joe Boyd (producer), John
Head (research) and Gary Weis (visuals) is an
assemblage of mostly familiar footage of
Hendrix performances (at Monterey,
Woodstock, the Isle of Wight, etc.)
interspersed with interviews and
reminiscences of people who were close to
Jimi — his relatives and friends, his fellow
musicians^ and rivals, people he exploited and
people who exploited him. The music is
unique, and even things we’ve seen before
(e.g., his dive-bombing version of “The
Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock) are
fresh and even breathtaking when one
considers his virtuosity as a guitarist. Some of
Hendrix’s performances and a good deal of
the language are crude, but it is the interviews
that make the film a fascination and which
reveal the awful dynamics of the
super-charged world of the rock star. (A-lll)
TV Movies
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 3 -- 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - SMILE JENNY, YOU’RE DEAD -
Made-for-TV thriller stars David Janssen as a
private eye searching for the would-be killer
of a cover girl model (Andrea Marcovicci).
The plot has more red herrings than a fish
market during a power blackout, but the
jazzy acting by Janssen and the others makes
this a better-than-routine diversion. Keep
your eye on the demented photog (Zalman
King) who keeps snapping the girl’s pix.
9:00 p.m. (CBS) - THE MIGRANTS ~
Special TV adaptation of the storyline by
Tennessee Williams, with Cloris Leachman,
Ron (“Happy Times”) Howard, and Sissy
Spacek. This is a kind of spin-off on the
Williams name, but it promises some solid
drama based on a thoughtful examination of
the desperate plight of migrant farm workers
in contemporary America. Good acting,
important human values. Ron Howard is
especially good as the youngster who rebels
against the drab life ahead of him. Miss
Leachman and the others are members of his
farming family.
9:00 p.m. (ABC) - THE BIG BOUNCE
(1969) - A young boy (Ryan O’Neal} doing
“stoop” labor on a California cucumber ranch
becomes deeply involved with a supposedly
lovable psychotic youngster (Leigh
Taylor-Young). Her desire for thrills
eventually repels the lad and he leaves her,
but only after she has committed a murder.
The central convention of this hoary
entertainment dates back to the twenties
when film vamps enthralled their prey in
order to indulge their own whims. This
melodrama's only concession to
contemporary cinematic developments is its
slick color photography, several scenes of its
starlet capering ludicrously in the buff, and a
volume of gutter dialogue used so
self-consciously as to emphasize its
offensiveness. It should be noted that Lee
Grant is effective in what is essentially a small
ahd mawkish part, the only performer to have
escaped the deadening hand of director Alex
March. Doubtless it will be much cut for TV
presentation. (C)
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - KALEIDOSCOPE
(1B68) -- Warren Beatty and Susannah York
star in this sophisticated comedy-thriller
having to do with the big con games of a
gambler on the loose in London and on the
Continent. Most of the-tricks are played on
the audience, but if you can stick with the
complicated plot (and if the plot itself can
stick with the commercial breaks), there’s an
opportunity to enjoy.- Beatty is weak as the
“hero” but others in the mostly-British cast
are excellent and diverting. (A-lll)
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5 - 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) - CAN ELLEN BE SAVED? - Can
anyone? Especially when “fiction” films like
this churn out of the daily headlines? The
story here concerns the seduction of young
men and women by severe and hypnotic
religious Cults, and their subsequent
“kidnapping” by their parents for
“deprogramming” by experts in this field.
Leslie Nielsen, Michael Parks, Kathy Cannon
star.
8:30 p.m. (NBC) - THE COUNTRY GIRL
-- A Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of
the celebrated but little-produced play by
Clifford Odets. This is pure human drama,
given the added force of its Thirities'
Broadway milieu. Jason RObards stars as a
boozy Broadway actor fallen on hard times
but given a new chance to get back up on top.
His wife, played by Shirley Knight, knows his
weaknesses, and therefore vacillates between
otpimism & pessimism over the starring role
he’s auditioning for. Nicely done, and
attractively set.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6 - 9:00 p.m.
(NBC) -- SAM WHISKEY (1969) -• Angie
Dickinson tries to protect the family name by
seducing Burt Reynolds into retrieving some
gold bars stolen by her dead husband and
returning them to the U.S. Mint in Denver
before the government discovers the loss. The
young lady’s sense of morality displays a
lightheadedness that is typical of the film as a
whole, and Ossie Davis and Clint Walker, as
Reynolds’ supporters in the improbable
scheme, do nothing to right the balance. Too
farfetched for even comedy, this
undistinguished Western directed by Arnold
Lavin limps along with nothing at all to
recommend it. (B)
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7 - 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) - KANSAS CITY BOMBER (1972) -
If you can believe Raquel Welch as the very
disputed queen of the Roller Derby scene,
then perhaps you can stick with this inept and
shallow melodrama about how difficult it is
to enjoy a meaningful life when all the time
you’re on wheels going around in circles. Miss
Welch is undeniably decorative in a
wax-museum sort of way, but she has
difficulty breathing convincingly, much less
paring off a slice-of-life characterization. As
her team’s owner, and a man who works
Raquel into his dreams for a bigger and better
franchise, Kevin McCarthy looks and acts as if
he's doing a men’s furnishings ad. Credit
director Jerrold Freedman with managing the
impossible task of making the super-hyped
sport of Roller Derby look boring. Rough
language - most of it will be blipped - makes
this adult fare. (A-lll)
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8 - 9:00 p.m.
(CBS) -- DRACULA -- Bram Stoker’s
perennial horror tale of vampirism is stoked
up once again, this time in a slick,
transplanted TV version starring taut-jawed
Jack Paiance as the count with the unusual
bite. In this version, he gets in trouble when
he kisses an otherwise quiet country lass, who
promptly runs amok among the terrified
townsfolk. WoO-wooo-woo-see what a little
kiss can do!
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9 - 8:30 p.m.
(ABC) -- THE ELEVATOR - Crime-suspense
thriller involves an elevator-load of robbers
and loot that gets stuck during an escape from
a hi-rise office building. Down in the lobby
and up on the roof, the cops and criminals
race to get at that stuck car. James Farentino,
Carol Lynley star, along with a cast of other
worthies-of-the-tube.
9:00 p.m. (NBC) - THE OMEGA MAN
(1971) -- We’d just about managed to forget
this bit of high-priced trash when along comes
the network to shove it rudely into our living
room. The sci-fi story about the last healthy
man on earth following a nuclear
holocaust-plus-ecological-disaster reeks of
strained social and political significance. What
it is, shallow down inside, is a garden-variety
melodrama about, gulp, true love. Charlton
Heston adds wasted class in the title role, as a
man who must choose between his own
survival or the rebuilding of the human race,
even if it does mean that he has to flirt with
the only untainted woman around, a girl
played by Rosalind Cash. Hollywood does it
again. (A-lll)
early signs of the presence of the devil. (NC Photo courtesy Warner Bros.)
SIGN OF THE DEVIL - Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil and Ellen
Burstyn as her mother fight to hold down a bouncing bed, one of the
BOOK
THE CONSPIRACY OF GOD: THE
HOLY SPIRIT IN MEN, by Father John
C. Haughery, S.J., Doubleday (Garden
City, N.Y., 1973) 154 pages, $4.95.
Reviewed by Father James W. Heisig.
(NC News Service)
It is refreshing to find a theologian as
tolerant and as constructive as John
Haughey writing about the Holy Spirit.
For while avoiding polemics amidst
current controversies, he takes positive
and deliberate steps to defend the
revival of interest in the Spirit and to
clarify its consequences for our
understanding and imitation of Christ.
Father Haughey begins where most
contemporary Christology leaves off.
Convinced of the utter humanity of
Jesus, he is equally concerned to
preserve His divinity. This he does by
portraying Jesus as a “Spirit-led man”
whose growth in wisdom,
self-understanding and intimacy with
God occurred under the tutelage of the
third person of the Trinity. The life of
Jesus is then held up to us as the
concrete fullness of what each of us in
turn has to learn from the Spirit whom
we too often neglect. As an example of
this latter process, the author points to
three stages in the life of Simon Peter;
before, during and after his sojourn with
Jesus.
When Father Haughey next turns to
the complex problems of talking about
the personality of the Spirit Itself (he
prefers the neuter pronoun, alas, rather
than examine the history of feminine
imagery), his approach begins to wear
thin.
We are told a good deal about the
Pentecostal event and its effects on the
Church; and we are reminded of the
prefigurations of the Holy Spirit in the
Old Testament. Yet the fundamental
question, who the Spirit is, remains
unanswered. Hence the author’s
suggestion that we replace the
traditional term “inspiration” with the
neologism “conspiration,” in order to
express the cooperative relationship
between the Spirit of God and the spirit
of the human person, sounds more
homiletic than theological. Indeed most
of the book suffers from a certain
imprecision in language and in approach
to scriptural sources. Happily, Father
Haughey is aware of these limitations
and is accordingly cautious in the claims
he makes for his talk about the Spirit.
In the final two chapters the author
strides more confidently in his field of
specialization, ascetical theology. His
analysis of the divisions within the
Church according to a plurality of
spiritualities is most interesting. And his
restatement of the Ignation doctrine on
the discernment of spirits bears the
trustworthy stamp of the experienced
spiritual director. One would do well to
tuck this little book in his suitcase
before leaving for retreat.
(Father James W. Heisig is an
assistant professor of philosophy and
religion at Divine Word College,
Epworth, Iowa.)
LIFE IN MUSIC
BY THE DAMEANS
The Way We Were
Memories
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water color memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were.
Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time rewritten every line
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we, could we?
Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were, the way we were.
By M. Hamlisch, A. Bergman, M. Bergman
( c 1973 CBS, Inc.)
We remember, of course, the “good old days.” They are a part of everyone’s
life. Our parents talk about them -- the country store with its low prices, the
long walks to school, the time when children respected adults. Oddly enough,
when we gained a few years - somewhere around high school - even we began to
have memories of those richer times gone by. For us, it was first love or a parent
who was no longer with us or a special summer somewhere or a glorious age of
sport. All of us have something resembling a “romantic” past.
During the last two years or so, the feeling of nostalgia seems to have taken
over much of popular music. Groups and individuals began singing the old songs,
touching a resonant chord in people’s experience. Recently, Karen Carpenter
provided what might be called the theme song for the movement, “Yesterday
Once More.” And the cinema jumped into the act with “Summer of ‘42,” “A
Separate Peace,” and others like them, all aimed at conjuring up a past when life
was vital and happy.
Why is it that the “old days” are so often more fondly regarded than the
present? HoW could we have missed their happiness while they were happening?
Barbara Streisand’s new song, “The Way We Were,” gives a surprisingly honest
insight into nostalgia. You expect the same old comment when the lyrics begin
“ .. .misty water color memories of the way we were.” But as the song unfolds,
you discover how candidly she views the past. Memory, she sings, is selective. So
often it retains only the good times because “what’s too painful to remember we
simply choose to forget.” So it is that we remember the laughter, the glory, the
discovery, the virtue, and we block out everything else. Only the scattered
pictures of a family album remain. The past was not really so simple, but time
has rewritten the story line.
Two striking ideas are offered in “The Way We Were”: It recognizes the
tendency to romanticize the past and blow it out of proportion; the past should
teach us a reverence for the present and the future. Memories then should not
hinder us but should make present-day life more bearable. They are our special
moments and have given us a clearer insight into those things that are valuable.
“The Way We Were” is a statement about the mixed values that we find in life
and a counsel to be real about the goods and the bads it presents; it is a
statement that all of life is not wrapped up in the past, but that those moments
have brought us to the now - the way we are.
(All correspondence should be directed to: The Dameans; St. Joseph Church; 216 Patton
Ave.; P.O. Box 5188; Shreveport, La. 71105)