As is regretfully so often the case, it’s been a minute since my last post. There is some kind of irony in the fact that as a horror blogger, I can so rarely successfully publish a post during October, and on top of that, in the lead up to Halloween, I think I found the time to watch fewer horror movies than any other month this year. I guess I was just too busy Halloweening to engage with others’ work. And here we are, the high horror holidays are well behind us (so is Thanksgiving to be fair) and out my window, winter has fully arrived and the whole world is cast in greyscale as the snow falls from leaden skies. And so, with this somewhat bleak yet beautiful view as a backdrop, I’d like to focus this month on a recent monochromatic discovery as desolate, striking, and magical as any turning of the seasons.
In my last post on The Whip and the Body (1963), I was blown away by the central performance of Daliah Lavi, an actress that I’d not previously heard a thing about, but who just knocked my socks off in Bava’s ghostly, kinky, gothic-psychodrama masterpiece. Having praised her work in that film on social media, a commenter suggested I check out what Lavi had described as her favorite film and performance, Brunello Rondi’s Il Demonio (The Demon), and hey, isn’t it refreshing to have social media actually deliver what it promises – making connections with strangers that can broaden your horizons and introduce you to new things – rather than just being the usual cesspool of conflict and ugliness? So thanks, whoever you were, cause this was a tremendous movie: gorgeous, tragic, folksy, witchy, and genuinely surprising. It was a really refreshing watch – nothing about it was at all ‘typical’ – the sort of underseen deep cut about which I’m more than happy to spread the word.
There will be spoilers, but I’m not so sure this is the kind of film that can really be spoiled, so read on. (But if you want to watch it first – and you should – it’s great – I did so on Tubi)
Il Demonio (1963)
As I understand, Brunello Rondi was a frequent collaborator of Fellini’s, but this was his first solo feature film, and it is a doozy! A fascinating cultural artifact, documenting southern Italian folk beliefs and practices at the time, this is also a blistering portrayal of one young woman’s psychological damage and social downfall, trapped in an isolated, religiously conservative, deeply superstitious village, expressing her pain and torment through the only avenues available to her: the aforementioned folk beliefs and practices. I feel justified in discussing this as a horror movie – it’s chock full of witchcraft and possession, but past that, there is no shortage of real life horrors. The main character, Purif (Daliah Lavi), is abused and ostracized, beaten by her family and raped by strangers (and her family, for that matter) – she is isolated and outcast, chased and stoned, and her home is lit on fire. But her nightmare is no less psychological, tormented by thoughts, desires, and impulses beyond her control. It’s a lot.
It’s also just so rich in cultural detail, in little kernels of life, in human comedy and brutality and fear. It is often a deeply funny movie, but ultimately sad more than anything else. And on top of all that, through all the cruelty and pain and absurdity and nuance, it is starkly beautiful. Seriously, every scene has something that made me laugh or gasp or hold my breath at how staggeringly stunning it all was. I can’t overstate my excitement at the filmmaking – truly cinematic pleasure amidst all these scenes of madness and misery – and that’s one of the main things I come to this genre for. What a treat!
In short, Purificazione, AKA Purif, having had sexual relations with a local villager, Antonio, is tossed aside by him in favor of a more “proper” match. We never know the extent of their previous relationship, except that she’s been left wounded and obsessed, and that he now views her as little more than an animal. With no other outlet for her suffering, Purif turns to witchcraft: cursing him, disrupting his wedding, and hexing his bridal bed. At the beginning of the film, the townspeople mainly see her as an off-putting nuisance, a weirdo they have to put up with, and occasionally drag away screaming when she has an episode; but over time, especially after she publicly declares her allegiance to Satan, writhing in the town square in demoniac ecstacy, what had once been mere cautious distaste grows into full-fledged terror and hate. She is subjected to exorcism (as well as folksier and more sexually invasive treatments), she is branded a witch, and she is blamed for all the troubles of the village, from dead children to bad weather, until they finally set out to burn her corruptive influence out of the very air.
This is an interesting piece, full of supernatural vibes, but concurrently, also rooted in psychology, a well observed document of human feeling and action and social constraints and taboos. Regardless of the spells and potions and some mysterious goings on, I never felt that there was actually anything otherworldly in the proceedings. Purif’s “witchcraft” is the kind of sympathetic magic you can imagine a child creating for themself. She feels so strongly, her hurt is so powerful, that of course the blood that falls from a needle stabbed into her breast, mixed with a bit of her hair, baked in the oven to ash, and sprinkled surreptitiously in his wine, would be enough to curse Antonio to suffer as she suffers, to ruin his life as he has hers.
Similarly, I never felt that there was any ‘demon’ in the literal sense in her possession. But that doesn’t exactly mean that it’s “not real.” It is real for her. It is real for the whole world in which she lives. How could it possibly be more “real?” She, and everyone she knows, lives in a realm of magical thinking wherein everything is true. Even if her possessed affectation is rather an available physical and verbal expression to give voice to her feelings, to her mental torment, than it is a case of some sinister “spirit” entering her body and refusing to leave, she is still possessed by that feeling, by her, let’s call it ‘madness.’ The wicked freedom that comes with ‘being possessed’ gives her free rein to howl out all the frustration and anger and sadness inside – it lets her laugh at any authority that might scold or belittle her for either her original ‘sin’ of physical pleasure or her inability to get her feelings under control, to tamp herself down into a socially acceptable persona, to let it go, “be normal.”
Accepting this loosely in the horror canon, I think it is interestingly situated – both as a late piece of Italian Neorealism (which is admittedly not at all a horror sub-genre), and a rather early example of Folk Horror (which is). On the Neorealism side (and I am NO EXPERT), as I understand, it fits the bill: a focus on underprivileged ‘real’ people, often episodic more than narrative based, and featuring qualities of a documentary style, including the presence of non-actors and shooting on-location. We’ve got all of this. Occurring in a remote village in southern Italy in 1963, it may be set in ‘the present,’ but it is as far from the bustling modernity of Rome as is Antarctica. In one shot, for about one second, a road can be glimpsed with cars passing by, and it feels shocking that they could even exist in this world, as incongruous as a boom mic dipping into a shot in a cheap B movie. But I’m sure this must be intentional, as significant as the nearby highway in Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling (which shares some similar themes).
While the main characters are professionally portrayed (Lavi is outstanding once again), the village seems primarily peopled with non-professionals. Just characteristic locals with craggy faces, and not so many teeth, and it is such an added value. They aren’t often called on to “act” too much, but their presence grounds the whole piece. Finally, the episodic nature of it all gives vast opportunities to follow the life of this place, of these people, as the seasons come and go, and they plant, and they marry, and they reap, and they die, all along carrying the traditions that make them themselves, that define their community for good and for bad. To liken it to yet another film, I was often put in mind of Fellini’s Amarcord (1973) (but maybe that’s because I don’t know much about Italian Neorealism past what I’ve read on Wikipedia – I’ve seen only a handful of old Italian flicks that aren’t horror, so of course I think of one of them…). You really feel the life of the place. Sometimes it’s quite funny, and sometimes tragic, but it is constantly so vibrant, thrumming with life.
On the Folk Horror front, this is really a case in which the “horror” is “folk.” The villagers are a threat to the ‘witch’ – not the other way around. While their folk beliefs have a kind of rural loveliness, they also doom Purif to suffer, and many take advantage of her in her outcast state, sexually and otherwise. The beliefs that hold the community together bind her in an inescapable hell of rigid social mores in which her own inner drives – healthy and natural ones like sexual desire, and problematic ones like her possible mental illness can only be understood as the influence of the infernal.
Interestingly, in the scenes of possession and exorcism, there are direct precursors to The Exorcist (1973). Purif thrashes in her bed, her hands pressing towards her crotch just as she fights them away, suggesting a kind of tortured masturbation that Regan would later experience, and most notably, during her exorcism, she even does the “spider walk” that would be excised from The Exocist’s theatrical release ten years later.
That said, however, these could not be more different films. In Friedkin’s religious horror, a young girl is assaulted by something from beyond society, beyond mankind, and so much of the horror is rooted in the realization of its radical evil – science fails her and reason fails her, and she can only be saved by virtue of faith. In Il Demonio, Purif is beset upon by the intolerance of her village, by their inability to understand the world in any terms beyond the religious and the supernatural. And she can’t understand it any other way either. In a way, faith is the monster here; a belief that sentences her to all kinds of pain. You can’t help but feel that if Purif lived in a modern city, she might not exactly enjoy perfect mental health (who does?), but with some therapy, with some good pills, and with a more open society around her (where she wouldn’t immediately be cast as a fallen woman for one dalliance with some guy), with all of that, she might be closer to alright.
That said, though the horror lives in the beliefs and actions of the villagers, I actually don’t feel that Rondi’s film views them in an entirely negative light. At no point does it feel like there is a snide authorial voice saying, “hey check out how cruel and stupid these superstitious dummies are!” Rather, there is a documentarian’s generosity towards these people and this place which a modern perspective might judge harshly. The villagers live in an unforgiving world that offers few comforts, and if they have developed a series of beliefs and practices that give them a sense of meaning and agency in the face of the vast indifference of the sun and the wind and the saints, I can’t entirely discount the value of that faith. And truly, those folk beliefs are so much of what makes Il Demonio singular, presenting so many ethnological details along the way (the film opens with thanks to the particular ethnologist whose work had inspired it).
During Antonio’s wedding, after he and his bride have had to answer questions at the door and then hop over the threshold to enter, the candle on his side of the church begins to flicker as if it might go out and the entire village watches with baited breath, excited and fearful, as that would be a terribly dark portent. Was this the result of Purif’s curse? Who knows?
After the wedding, the two sets of parents prepare their adult children’s marriage bed – a scythe is placed beneath to ward off the devil, raisins are spread in a cross on the bedsheets to absorb all evil from the room, a bag of salt is places under the pillows, and there is an elaborate ritual governing how and when the newlyweds may enter the room.
There is a long procession up the hill to the village, everyone carrying heavy stones that represent their sins, some of them being whipped by others – when they reach the town square, they are called on to publicly admit their wrongdoings and put down the weight of their sin, and some of it is so much worse than anything that might be attributed to the local madwoman/witch – the father that angrily turned out his disobedient son (who subsequently died) or the lonely widower who admits to having sexually abused his teenage daughter both seem so much more shocking than Purif and her dalliances with hedge magic, but they both seek and are apparently granted absolution and thus can continue to be part of society. Not so with Purif. It is in this scene that she declares her possession and starts to flop about in the town square. It feels performative, almost calculated as she listens to all of the other villagers’ declared sins and then chooses to top them. Furthermore, she does not want and will not accept forgiveness, and will never fully be a part of this society again.
In a striking scene, as Purif sits in a nearby tree, eating an apple and laughing, seemingly the whole village is gathered on a hillside to drive off storm clouds that threaten to wash away freshly spread seeds – they recite their liturgy, beat rocks with sticks, and ring bells to repel the rain – and it is kind of beautiful. These are poor people of little power, standing together against the dark times to come. Their folk magic is just as simplistic as Purif’s curse in the opening scene, but it comes with the weight of repetition and history, and it is a moving form of natural sorcery. Of course, then they notice Purif, decide this coming storm is all her fault, chase her to her house and try to light it on fire – so yeah, sometimes these otherwise bucolic impoverished folks are just the worst.
Finally, by the end, the villagers cut down a grove of precious old growth trees to build a ritual fire in the square and they carry burning brands through the village streets to cleanse the town of Purif’s darkness. At first, it’s genuinely scary – is this enraged mob actually going to burn her? But when it is clear that it is just a benign ceremony of purification (as they seek Purificazione), it takes on a different character, even at times fun and festive. Sadly, that doesn’t mean it ends well for Purif – but how could it really? The only way for her to thrive is away from here, but that world is forever beyond her reach.
Truly, there is nowhere for her to go. At one point, her family hides her in a cellar, pretending that she no longer exists, that she has moved away. This imprisonment seems heartless, but it’s hard to blame the family in this moment. It is actually for her protection, and their own (see the aforementioned attempt to burn her out of her family house). Early in the film, we saw her father beat her with a belt after some of her more wild actions had gotten back to him. Incensed at the shame she’d brought on the household, he lost control and her brothers had to fight him off of her. At that point, he seemed monstrous. But by this moment in the film, you can kind of understand what he’s going through.
Purif is our protagonist and we are entirely in her corner, but how can one not sympathize with those who have to deal with her all the time? She is always getting into trouble and it is always weird trouble. She steals a pack of goats to lay siege to the church where Antonio is being wed. Later that night, she attacks his home (which has wisely been guarded against such an eventuality), attempting to hex his first born by throwing a dead cat at his threshold. She shows up at the death bed of a child where all the women are uncontrollably weeping (in ritual fashion) and entirely inappropriately makes it all about Purif. She’s a problem for herself and others and no one knows how to deal with it. Not the priest (who does make an effort), not her father (who beats and imprisons her), not her mystic uncle (who takes sexual advantage of her), not Antonio (who no matter how often he throws her to the ground and leads angry mobs against her is always moments away from tearing off her dress), and of course not Purif herself.
The best she can do is to choose to be the problem that she is, to choose herself against the society she does not fit into. As in Matka Joanna od Aniołów (1961), Purif’s possession, not her exorcism, feels freeing, revelatory. Whether she’s trying to lasciviously lick a crucifix or demonically speaking in tongues, embracing “wickedness” allows Purif a freedom she has no other access to, and it feels so, so good. Towards the end of the film, after trying to strangle a nun who’d tried to lead her in prayer, Purif defiantly refuses salvation – for the first time in her life, she feels powerful, and that can’t be lost.
This is a unique and special piece and I’m so glad I gave it a chance. What brought me to it was Daliah Lavi and she does not disappoint. It is a totally different style of performance from The Whip and the Body, released the same year, but it is probably even more impressive (I guess the fact that she’s in almost every frame helps with that). From start to finish, the filmmaking wows at every turn, Rondi making such good use of the ragged, sun drenched environment. Purif is usually in black and she just pops against the brightly lit stony village and its surrounding hills. Rondi also does so much with long shots, pulling back, for example, from a close focus on Antonio sitting with his future mother in law, to an extreme wide view where Purif can be seen watching on a hill in the distance, to a snap zoom on her own distraught face. And it is a film of faces. The supporting cast, which I assume to be non-professional actors, offer so much character and Rondi captures every coarse feature with the same crisp contrast that he does the arid landscape.
And for a film with so much visual contrast, it is rich in ambivalence and nuance. On one level, it is a story of witchcraft and folk magic and possession, but then we never feel there really are any demons or that there is any magic, but we also feel, in the ways that are most important for the life experience of its characters, that all of that is real anyway. I don’t think we’re ever meant to be wondering if something is ‘real’ or not. Clearly, there are “realistic” explanations for everything – at least it feels that way, but then there are some things that are never explained. Did Purif’s curse actually cause the candle in the wedding ceremony to almost go out? Did it cause the terrible bleeding rash that Antonio developed? Did the spirit of the recently deceased boy meet her at the river? How did she know the tree at the convent was so important (where someone had recently hanged himself)? I don’t know, and interestingly, I feel the film isn’t interested in me asking those questions. What people experience is simply, in fact, what they experience. And this is about those people and their experiences. It is heady and affecting and really worth seeing.
This is only nominally a “horror movie” and it won’t scare you or gross you out, but if you feel you could have patience for what I’ve described, I think you’ll find it’s really worth your time. It was worth mine.