angels

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'The Exorcist' turns 50 -- Visions of hell, in defense of beliefs about heaven

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'The Exorcist' turns 50 -- Visions of hell, in defense of beliefs about heaven

William Peter Blatty was pounding out the first pages of "The Exorcist" when his telephone rang -- bringing the news that his mother had died.

The screenwriter was already digging into dark material that was completely different from the whimsical work -- such as the classic "A Shot in the Dark" Pink Panther script -- that established his Hollywood career. He was writing a fictional take on an exorcism case he heard discussed during his Georgetown University studies.

But the death of Blatty's Lebanese-born, fervently Catholic mother changed everything. She spoke very little English and called her son "Il Waheed," Arabic for "the one" or "the only." He struggled with grief for five years and his supernatural thriller turned into something much more ambitious.

"I wanted to write about good and evil and the unseen world all around us. I wanted to make a statement that the grave is not the end, that there is more to life than death," said Blatty, meeting in a diner near the Georgetown neighborhood described in "The Exorcist."

It was 2013, four years before Blatty's death, and our conversation focused on the 40th anniversary of the film that brought him an Academy Award, for adopting his novel for the big screen. Now, on the 50th anniversary of "The Exorcist," critics are still debating why it had such as seismic impact.

Blatty insisted, many times, that he wasn't trying to shock people, even though the R-rated classic sent many rushing for theater exits, sickened by its stomach-wrenching visions. His goal was "apostolic, from the beginning," an attempt to inspire faith and defend core Christian doctrines, he said.

The equation was simple: "If demons are real, why not angels? If angels are real, why not souls? And if souls are real, what about your own soul? … And, by the way, if incarnate evil is real, what are you going to do about that?"

"The Exorcist" set box-office records for horror films, with numbers that soared with subsequent re-releases. At the same time, Blatty was deeply satisfied to hear priests report that, in the weeks after the movie opened, penitents lined up for confession.

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Lessons learned about Christmas past -- by watching classic movies of 1940s

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Lessons learned about Christmas past -- by watching classic movies of 1940s

It's a black-and-white movie Christmas, with snow falling as joyful families mingle on city sidewalks while window-shopping -- buying food, presents, decorations and fresh-cut trees for festivities that are only two days away.

For Americans, this scene represents the ghost of Christmas past, long before suburban malls, big-box scrums and Amazon.com. And as "The Bishop's Wife" opens, an angel -- a graceful Cary Grant -- enters this 1947 tableau, smiling at carolers and children and helping the needy and lost.

"Christmas is always in danger in Christmas movies -- we'd have no reason to make such movies otherwise," wrote critic Titus Techera, executive director of the American Cinema Foundation. In this classic movie, "we have a remarkable concentration of problems in one household: A man's faith, his family, community and church … are all tied together."

It isn't unusual to find miracles, tight-knit communities, glowing churches and parables about human choices, temptation, sin and redemption in old Christmas films, said Techera, contacted by Zoom while visiting Bucharest.

That's why Techera -- a native of Romania, before his work brought him to America -- has written four online essays about the lessons learned from watching '40s movies that were remade in the '90s. The other films in this Acton Institute series are "The Shop Around the Corner," "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Christmas in Connecticut."

There's a reason many modern Americans keep watching these movies, he said. Some yearn for a time before most Americans became so isolated, separated by jobs far from extended families, sprawling suburban neighborhoods and all the paradoxes built into digital networks that were supposed to keep people connected.

"What we see in these movies is a time when Christmas was a far less commercial celebration and there was quite a bit of continuity with traditions from the past. … For many, the church was part of that," he said. "Christmas was a family thing. It was a community thing. … Commerce was more subservient to ordinary life. Commerce had not taken over all of life, including Christmas."