"The Exorcist" Prologue: Buzzing Perfection

by Cláudio Alves

Between William Friedkin's death, a special spooky season re-release to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and a new sequel, The Exorcist feels like a hot topic. Then again, the 1973 movie is hard to shake off, even half a century after its original release. Indeed, one can count it among the most influential horrors in film history, a classic whose legacy lives on, scaring, maybe even scarring, generations long after it first shocked audiences. And yet, when discussing it, most people focus on the nightmare of a possessed child and her terrified mother, the doubt-ridden priest who regains his faith confronting evil beyond belief, or perhaps the freezing room where domesticity rots into hell on earth. 

For me, though, the best part of The Exorcist is its prologue, perhaps the picture's most divisive passage…

Far away from Georgetown, the narrative starts in the North Iraqi desert, following Max von Sydow's Father Merrin into an archeological dig. Along the excavation of forgotten ruins, a particular statue catches the clergyman's attention: the totem of Pazuzu, a demon he once encountered many years ago when it possessed an innocent boy. The artifact is an omen but also a challenge, defying the man of faith to another war in the battleground of a child's body and soul. Not that any of that is particularly discernible from the scenes, mind you. The Exorcist's prologue is incredibly scarce in details, presenting us with a saturnine man whose very spirit seems to tremble before the artifact facsimile of Pazuzu. Words are rare, exposition in near total absentia, narrative paused for no apparent reason. It's like a muted mood piece displaced from an earlier, more primitive and primordial cinema.

But that's precisely why it works. Atmosphere rules all, negotiating the anxiety of von Sydow's performance with an audiovisual tapestry of sensory dissonance. The sound, in particular, brings forth the malformed offspring of Jean-Louis Ducarme's design and Jack Nitzsche's score, keen on devouring us with a persistent insect-like buzz that feels as if it's coming from the bowels of an inferno down below. The simplicity of the mechanism is as astounding as its effect, further aided by Owen Roizman's sun-bleached and sand-blasted cinematography. While the images harken to a sense of realism, the aural realm perverts it into an otherworldly nausea. It's oppressive cinema, nervous and paranoid, immersing us into Merrin's view of a sickened cosmos. It further stakes its claim on the audience's unconscious, for, if The Exorcist can't scare you, it'll unnerve you like nobody's business.

It's maybe my favorite sequence from any Friedkin movie, and that's saying something, considering the man's rich resume. Are you as besotted by The Exorcist's suffocating prologue as I am? If not, what's your favorite passage in this classic?

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