In recent years horror fans have been treated to high quality releases offering fresh takes on witches (You Won’t Be Alone), mental illness (Smile), and really sketchy basements (Barbarian). But as engaging as these films are, the most fascinating horror-related movie that I saw in 2023 is Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary, Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist. Six days of interviews with director William Friedkin produced an entertaining deep dive into one of horror’s most revered works, The Exorcist (1973). But it goes further, becoming a meditation on the nature of creativity that is both revelatory and exhilarating.
It would have been easy for Leap of Faith to be a typical “making of” project filled with anecdotes explaining production details for some of its most famous sequences and recollections about the film’s seismic cultural impact in the 70’s. As satisfying as that may have been for many, I give Philippe a lot of credit for taking the movie into a markedly different direction, far away from spinning heads and projectile vomiting. He focuses instead on the imaginative processes and creative personality at work that ultimately resulted in the finished film. The reason we are so easily drawn into this discussion is because Leap of Faith has a super power. And its name is William Friedkin.
Philippe made the apparently self-effacing decision of editing himself out of the interviews. So, we do not hear his questions, only Friedkin’s answers. This proves to be strategic. It quickens the film’s pace while simultaneously keeping the audience trained on Friedkin, giving the impression that he is just riffing from topic to topic. Philippe adeptly adds illustrative visual commentary to whatever Friedkin is saying, establishing a call and response rhythm which enlivens the entire film.
Interviewed at age 84, Friedkin presents a multi-faceted personality that is audacious, yet gracious, self-assured yet at times uncertain. Whether he is dropping pieces of his filmmaking credo (“You don’t get spontaneity on take 90”), offering random observations (“There is nothing more powerful than a closeup of Steve McQueen”), or walking us through the philosophical ambiguity baked into the climax of The Exorcist (“I can’t defend that scene”), he speaks with a passionate clarity that is both captivating and thought provoking.
He has an almost brazen side that is never far from the surface. What director would choose to follow up their first Oscar (The French Connection,1971) by taking a hard left turn into that most disreputable of genres, horror? He had no problem telling William Peter Blatty that his first draft of a screenplay for his hit novel was “a travesty.” To his producer’s great dismay, he spent several weeks on location in Iraq filming a prologue that runs less than ten minutes. And on one occasion he smacked an actor in the face to get what he wanted for an important scene. Friedkin unabashedly states, “The whole film popped into my head from his (Blatty’s) novel. I knew exactly how I wanted to make it.”
But Friedkin is no ego-inflated brat. When he hits the wall with Max Von Sydow (Father Merrin) while working with him in his final confrontation with the demon, he offers to send for Ingmar Bergman to replace himself in the director’s chair to save the scene. And his favorite thing in The Exorcist is quite unexpected. It is a two-character sequence when Detective Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) quietly questions the possessed child’s (Regan / Linda Blair) mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) about a murder victim who was pushed out of her daughter’s bedroom window. Other than a slow camera pan in and out of the conversation, the palpable tension and release is carried off primarily by the actors. Friedkin regards their performances with quiet awe, clearly crediting Burstyn and Cobb rather than himself as the source of the scene’s effectiveness.
A deft storyteller, Friedkin’s shares two illuminating episodes about critical artistic decisions on The Exorcist. Repeated retellings have honed them into little pieces of performance art that are well worth the price of admission. The first details how he chose the unknown Jason Miller for the central role of Father Karras despite having already had a contract with the highly regarded 70’s actor, Stacy Keach. The other follows Friedkin’s quest to find the perfect musical score which leads to an encounter with none other than the legendary Bernard Hermann. Aside from being extremely entertaining, they also show Friedkin learning to let go of his pre-conceived notions of what “should” work in his movie. He begins to realize that he didn’t know “exactly” how to make this film. More on that later.
For me the most surprising aspect of Leap of Faith is the art form mashup that informs so much of Friedkin’s creative language. He speaks with unguarded candor, lovingly discussing his personal sources of artistic inspiration. Sometimes these are films, but more often they are pieces of music or a particular painting. They clearly had a profound impact. When discussing the primary cinematic influence on The Exorcist, Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (1955), he says, “I can’t watch it without bursting into tears. You totally believe it. There is no questioning that this is happening. It is not a cinematic trick.” This level of credibility was clearly his goal with The Exorcist. He later says, “I asked The Exorcist audience to believe what they were seeing.” The iconic movie poster image showing the arrival of Father Merrin as he stands outside of Regan’s house while the light streams from her bedroom window is revealed as a recreation of René Magritte’s famous painting, “Empire of Light.” By juxtaposing the figure of Father Merrin into the frame, Friedkin creates an unforgettable image of anticipatory dread.
Friedkin loves to use musical metaphors when discussing the movie. When recalling the aforementioned problem he had with Max Von Sydow, he claimed that the performance needed “more brass, not strings.” He invents a cinematic take on the concept of grace notes, defining them as little bits of visual or character information that deepen the viewer’s emotional experience even though “they don’t move the film one inch forward.” Philippe shows an example. Chris is walking home from work. “Tubular Bells” is playing in the background and leaves are falling from the trees in her Georgetown neighborhood. She smiles as she passes some children in Halloween costumes and notices two nuns walking along while their habits are being blown by the wind. The scene may function as foreshadowing, but it also is in the picture because Friedkin finds it beautiful. And even in a story as disturbing as this he seeks opportunities to express that impulse.
While Friedkin willingly acknowledges his outside influences, and clearly has his own ideas about filmmaking, there is a third leg to his creative stool. It is a concept originated by the famous director Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M). In an interview (ironically with Friedkin), Lang claimed that he made his films with what he called a sleepwalker’s security. He came to believe that whatever choices he made would somehow be the right ones. And he did not second guess himself. Friedkin ultimately adopts this same stance, which is why Jason Miller played Father Karras, Bernard Herrmann did not compose the film score, and he shot a climax to the movie that he didn’t truly understand. Friedkin’s leap of faith freed him to create a film that is a triumph of intuition over strategy, of inspiration over craft.
In October 2023 I had the opportunity to attend a 50th anniversary screening of The Exorcist in a real movie theater. Most of the packed house was college-aged. While I was excited to see the movie on a big screen for the first time in decades, I was also curious as to how the film would play to an audience in 2023.
There is a thing that I have experienced a handful of times going to movies of various genres, a communal feeling that comes when the audience gives themselves over to what they are seeing. And as several “Oh, nos” and “Oh, my Gods” erupted around me, I knew it was happening again. Feeling that group engagement that evening took things to a higher level. I only wished that, like some of these patrons, I was seeing The Exorcist for the first time.
It is a bit curious that through the decades Willian Friedkin resisted classifying The Exorcist as a horror film. He preferred to describe it as “a story about the mysteries of faith.” But regardless of his public stance on this point, it is crystal clear that Friedkin is employing the power of horror to explore this theme and tell this story. In the end, the important thing is not that The Exorcist Is a horror film. Rather, it is that, however he got there, Friedkin’s blend of imagery, atmosphere, performance, and storytelling made it a nearly perfect one.
On August 7th, 2023, a few weeks short of his 88th birthday, William Friedkin left us. His work, which includes many films besides The Exorcist, is his professional legacy. But Alexandre O. Philippe, by drawing out this character who possessed the sass of a ballpark hot dog vendor and the soul of a poet, gifts us with the opportunity to get to know a most fascinating artist. If cinema is still a thing 50 years from now, I believe that Leap of Faith’s celebration of William Friedkin will still be well worth a look.
Alexandre O. Philippe’s Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist is streaming on Shudder.
About Rich Dishman – My fascination with horror began with a way inappropriately aged viewing of the Universal Frankenstein. It was an experience so terrifying yet so exhilarating that I have spent the rest of my movie going life trying to top it. I began writing movie reviews for Classic-Horror.com in 2010. Since its retirement in 2012, I have been a regular contributor at the multi-media British site, Contains Moderate Peril, and more recently for the horror website Ravenous Monster. I have a day job, but I am also a professional musician (well, drummer). I want to start a project to perform a repertoire consisting exclusively of soundtrack music from horror and sci-fi films. Is that weird? I live with my wonderful wife and two cats. They see and they know that I “wouldn’t even harm a fly.” Rich Dishman has previously written for Horror Homeroom on the Halaloween film festival put on by the University of Michigan’s Global Islamic Studies Center, The Dead Zone, and on Val Lewton and Oz Perkins.
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