A few weeks ago, one of the great New Hollywood directors left us. His work educated generations of younger filmmakers. Watch the two car chases in two of his films, The French Connection of 1971 and To Live and Die in L.A. of 1985: the use of the camera, the scenes, the editing: this is a filmmaking class in itself. Action thrillers were completely overhauled in their canons by Friedkin with unpredictable plot twists, something we had never seen before. In his oeuvre, there are no all-around heroes and wicked criminals: there’s plenty grey where his characters twist and turn to their own advantage. William Friedkin was a master of horror. Consecrated by The Exorcist (1973), his lesser known The Guardian (1990) and Bug (2006) are by no means lesser examples.
Friedkin created suspense like no one else could. He much preferred suspense to the more common shock effect. In Sorcerer (1977), we find a masterpiece of high tension that rivals the original novel’s earlier adaptation by Henri-Georges Clouzot. At the Venice Film Festival, we will see a re-edition of The Exorcist as well as his latest work, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.
Six years since documentary The Devil and Father Amorth and twelve since the beautiful Killer Joe, William Friedkin would have been to Venice with his latest fiction feature, 2023′ The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. Unfortunately,...
The realism of possession (the preternatural phenomena, the vomiting, the obscenities) is the most evident aspect but not the heart of The Exorcist: it is not a horror film but a film about pain. Before bursting into Regan’s body, hell is already in human suffer...
An innovative crime action movie that re-writes the rules of the genre.
Shocking at the time, a milestone of horror.
A great Al Pacino plays an undercover cop investigating on a series of murders.
A unique detective story where corruption runs rampant, and the plot twist is just around the corner.
A merciless film noir and a story where nobody’s innocent.
