Il demonio (Brunello Rondi, 1963)

[puxzkkx]

Let's talk about the excellent Il demonio, the sophomore feature of Brunello Rondi (who wrote many of Fellini's best-known films like 8 1/2 and La dolce vita)!I Apparently this anticipates in many ways The Exorcist... although I wouldn't know because I haven't seen that film.

What seems on the surface a borderline exploitative "evil woman" picture takes on multiple degrees of meaning while you watch it. The story is of a farmer's daughter in a small rural village. After cursing an ex-lover so that he will "never forget her", she becomes known as a witch and is ostracized within the community. The beautiful Daliah Lavi (brilliantly) plays our anti/heroine, significantly named Purificazione, an interesting character that becomes something of a feminist figure by the film's end.

What Rondi seems to be advocating here is sexual freedom for women - like so many women in Italy Puri is treated as an object by the various men in her village, and this objectification is enforced further by the community's women. Differentiating this from any other schlocky horror of the time is the focus on Puri as a protagonist - we begin the film with her, and her mysterious activities are automatically a point of interest. Her first one-on-one interaction with another character - her ex-lover - reinforces this connect with the audience despite her "demonic" behaviour, as he immediately identifies himself as one of the "bad guys" by attacking her sexually and then beating her. There is a huge disconnect in the acting styles of Lavi and the rest of the cast - she is fiercely emotional and completely present in every scene, all of the other actors play their parts to a standard of Bressonian blankness. Each major male character is put at odds with Puri - her ex-lover beats her and ultimately

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kills her,

a priest uses an exorcism ritual as an excuse to molest her, her father savagely beats her and a shepherd who finds her hiding amongst his flock ties her up and rapes her with complete lack of affect. The women aren't much better - near the end of the film she is taken in by a group of nuns who seem welcoming at first, but when they are perturbed by her curiosity towards a tree from which a man had hung himself, they block it with barbed wire and pictures of the Madonna. In a scene where Puri becomes "possessed", she pleads with the "demon" to let her go - these pleas are addressed straight to the camera, to the men in the audience who can only see women as virgins or whores. The sexual assault by invisible hands is an externalization of the everyday Italian attitude towards women and women's sexuality. Puri rejects both the men who want to rape her and the women who want to neuter her - her yearning for sexual freedom makes her an outcast, a "witch". In one amazing scene, we see half the village standing on a hillside praying for sun, as Puri lounges in a tree, eating an apple, diametrically opposed to the villagers in pose and attitude, scoffing at their impotent display of religious superstition. Sure enough, the dark clouds roll in.

At the end, it seems like Puri may have gotten her wish - returning to the village on the night of the bonfires, she meets her ex Anto and they make passionate (consensual) love. We are treated to a brilliant vista of mountains and valleys, and we cut to the pair lying on the hillside, grass rippling in the breeze. It's an idyllic scene.

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Anto touches her gently, only to stab her moments later. The feminine ideal is an idea self-destructive to the men that hold it as well as destructive for the women it represents. Anto is left helpless in the chaos of sexual repression and we end the film surveying Puri's lifeless but peaceful face.

This needs to be seen, omg! A major feminist work!

[knives]

I thought this was amazing and can’t add much to the above but will try anyway. In a lot of ways this made me think of what if Rossellini had collaborated with Bava instead of Fellini. This is kind of opposed to their religious optimism especially in L’amore, suggesting a world where following the illogic fear of religion rather than moral experience which leads into a pained mental breakdown not just of our lead, but the whole town.

[swo17]

Some could perhaps use a reminder that this in the All the Haunts Be Ours set

[therewillbeblus]

The most popular Letterboxd review for this movie is pretty apt:

Daliah Lavi's performance is basically the subway scene from Possession expanded to 90 minutes

I loved this- it's an excellent portrait of a collective engaging in Moral Model-based oppression to mental health, sourced in fear of the individual's eccentricity. The film is expertly directed, conceived, written, and shot, but it's Lavi who sells this entire journey with painful, captivating empathy- a dignified human being so full of life she transcends her milieu's monotonous examples of humanity into sainthood, ironically in the face of being damned as intrinsically satanic. puxzkkx wrote some insightful thoughts upthread, but I'm not convinced Rondi is attempting something as specific as a didactic feminist meditation on sexual freedom. He seems to be doing a whole lot more and aiming his ambitions broader. Part of me thinks that by segregating Davi from the complacent commoners as clearly the most interesting and passionate person of the bunch, he's slyly transforming what is essentially a sincere tragedy into a playfully loud demonstration of how the urgently emotional beings deserve the most attention, through having the character organically earn ours as viewers- accruing more and more interest until we've blocked out the rest of the dissenting voices to become one with Davi's vitality.

At one point or another, we all have engaged in microaggressions of stigma to outsiders to some extent on a subconscious level, and here is a film that forcibly but subtly positions us on a ride that will certainly gravitate towards challenging this process and witnessing conformity as boring and singularity as undeniably fruitful and life-affirming. She may be isolated and alone and face disastrous consequences, but even when she's in the worst scenarios, there are details that separate her from the rest of the pack in the most beautiful ways. For example, at the end her hair is filmed blowing in the wind in a manner that no other character's does; the earth, weather, and higher power brushing up against her as she does to it- a reciprocal, tangible kinetic engagement that no other vessel warrants receiving, because none of them truly give their full self to the world. There are countless other examples of how Davi is filmed as a participant elevated only slightly above the rest, and I suppose the tragedy is that truth of equal and opposite reactions with emotional intelligence often found in empaths and mentally ill people: That those who feel the strongest pain often are the most sensitive to life's highs, and the gift of desperation that destroys a soul but also lifts one's spirit into the rawest involvement with life's offerings. Davi may be alone, but at least she's alive while the rest of the society is sleeping and afraid- though with so much dissonance and dissatisfaction, I suppose everyone loses this round.

I choose to believe that, like an alien with restless untapped potential restricted by society's puritanical restraints, Davi acts hysterical and will need to be killed as a form of exorcism to achieve relief from these tragic holds. So the film becomes a corporeal tragedy or a mystic parable of the unstoppable demands, and invaluable merits in confronting our bodily and spiritual needs, depending on how you look at it.