Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Alexandre O. Philippe
Featuring: William Friedkin
The last couple of years have been generous to fans of American filmmaker
William Friedkin with the releases of career spanning doc
Friedkin Uncut, Friedkin's own exorcism-centric doc
The Devil and Father Amorth, and now director Alexandre O. Philippe's Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist.
As its subtitle suggests, Leap of Faith sees Friedkin reflect
on his most defining, if not best (that would be
The French Connection) work. Where many recent filmmaking docs - including Philippe's own
78/52, a feature length examination of
Psycho's shower scene - have come off as superficial and unfocussed,
Leap of Faith is a simple meat and potatoes doc that gives
Exorcist and Friedkin fans exactly what they want - 100
minutes of Friedkin speaking, unencumbered by any competing talking heads,
much like Friedkin's own 1974 doc Fritz Lang Interviewed by William Friedkin.
What makes Friedkin such a good subject is that unlike most filmmakers of
his level, who often view their early films as embarrassments regardless of
their critical and commercial success, Friedkin is intensely proud of his
early work, and The Exorcist in particular. It's telling that
the movies of his that Friedkin refers to here are his '70s films, as though
he knows that he did his best work in his early years and has made peace
with that notion.
For a filmmaker with a testy reputation, Friedkin comes off as commendably
humble here. He speaks of The Exorcist not in auteurist terms
but as a creative collaboration he's honoured to have been a part of. He
admits to occasionally getting lucky, such as how the wind just happened to
make two nuns' habits billow in the wind as though in slow motion, creating
what he refers to as a "grace note", a moment that isn't essential to moving
a film's plot forward but which lingers in the viewer's mind.
But Friedkin is far from a shrinking violet, and while he's egalitarian in
sharing the praise, we're left in no doubt that
The Exorcist is the result largely of his determined singular
vision. That determination rubbed some up the wrong way, with Stacy Keach
being fired from the role of Father Karras at the eleventh hour when
Friedkin happened to see Jason Miller performing in a play and knew
instantly he had to recast the part; and dropping an inappropriate score by
composer Lalo Schifrin, who never spoke to Friedkin again. There's also a
classic "never meet your heroes" anecdote that sees Friedkin screen the film
for prospective composer Bernard Herrmann, whose immediate response was
"maybe I can save this piece of shit for you." Needless to say, Friedkin
walked away from the chance to work with one of his idols.
There are more positive anecdotes, like how Friedkin coaxed a performance
from Max Von Sydow when the Swedish actor felt he couldn't play the role as
he didn't believe in God. Veering off from The Exorcist, Friedkin talks in glowing terms of his
French Connection cameraman Enrique Bravo and how the two
collaborated to create a then revolutionary handheld "chase the action"
aesthetic that has since become de rigueur for TV cop shows.
Examinations of The Exorcist's "curse" and its public phenomenon are thankfully ignored as Philippe and
his subject stick to the subject of filmmaking. At times it resembles a
great director's commentary as Friedkin speaks over scenes, giving us new
context as to how he prepared his actors, and it gives us an extra
appreciation of just how well-acted a movie
The Exorcist really is, including the non-professional real
life priests Friedkin wisely cast in supporting roles.
A good filmmaking documentary can give you the idea that its subject is the
greatest filmmaker that ever gazed through a viewfinder. I'd place Friedkin
in the category of "very good" rather than "great" filmmakers, but watching
him speak about his craft for 100 minutes here certainly had me convinced
that there was nobody better to adapt William Peter Blatty's book into the
beloved film that continues to resonate almost 50 years after its
debut.
