2023-08-07 17:08:57
Inducted master of horror with “The Exorcist”, the American director William Friedkin, enfant terrible of New Hollywood and short-lived husband of Jeanne Moreau, filmed the human soul at the border between good and evil.
When “The Exorcist” was released in the United States in 1973, William Friedkin already had several films and documentaries to his credit. Two years earlier, “French Connection” propelled him among the new Hollywood generation freed from classic codes, alongside Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.
In this adaptation of Robin Moore’s novel, two New York cops try to intercept a shipment of narcotics sent by the Marseille mafia. Drugs, endless hideouts and mythical chase: the nervous thriller wins five Oscars, including that of best director.
Four decades later, he will return to the subject with “The Devil and Father Amorth” (2017), a documentary on the Vatican exorcist. “I will never be the same once more following this experience,” he says.
A fan of first takes and action scenes shot with a handheld camera, William Friedkin is also renowned for his difficult character and his stormy shoots. In “The Exorcist” he does not hesitate to shoot blanks near the actors or to slap them to obtain the desired reaction.
The pinnacle is reached with the catastrophic filming of the “Convoy of Fear” (“Sorcerer”): withdrawal of actors, cases of gangrene, dangerous scenes. Released in 1977, this remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “Wages of Fear” was a commercial failure because it was eclipsed by the first opus of “Star Wars”, but experienced an unexpected comeback when it was released in a restored version in 2015.
Jeanne Moreau and Proust
Born on August 29, 1935 in Chicago into a modest family, admiring Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane”, the young Friedkin honed his first weapons in a Chicago TV: courier, program producer then author of a first documentary, “The People vs. Paul Crump” (1962), which managed to save a convict from the electric chair. “That day I became aware of the power of cinema,” he says.
Arrived in Hollywood in 1965, he shot series episodes including one for “Suspicion”, where a certain Alfred Hitchcock rebuffed him for not wearing a tie.
“I think that in each of us there is a good side and a dark side, and that it is a constant struggle so that the good triumphs”, estimates William Friedkin, convinced that “the most interesting characters of the world history are Jesus and Hitler.
To bear witness to this, the director scratches the unhealthy inclinations of his fellows: immoral thriller (“Federal Police, Los Angeles”, 1985), investigation by a police officer (Al Pacino) in the homosexual sado-masochistic world of New York (“Cruising “, 1980), dark and bloody comedy with Matthew McConaughey (“Killer Joe”, 2011).
Friedkin also invites himself where we least expect him, director of the distressing clip “Self control”, disco hit by starlet Laura Branigan, then director of operas in the 1990s.
A connoisseur of French cinema, he fell in love with one of its greatest actresses, Jeanne Moreau. First marriage for him, second for the heroine of “Jules and Jim”: their wedding celebrated in Paris in 1977 ended two years later.
Before their divorce, Jeanne Moreau instilled in him the passion of Proust. Friedkin devoured “In Search of Lost Time” and became a fan, traveling through the capital and Illiers-Combray in the writer’s footsteps.
A father of two sons, William Friedkin was married three more times and lived with producer Sherry Lansing.
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