The Exorcistis a movie that offers something new every viewing. Some may have first seen it in theaters and some on VHS on a 4:3 box, and then again with the release of the extended cut in theaters, and again on modern formats with home surround sound (you can still find new sounds in the rear speakers 50 years later that will make you sit up and askwhat was that). And soon, there will be an AI you can use toturn all of your classic 2D movies into anaglyph 3D. But until we get to that, there is anotheralternative lens through which you should explore your Blu-ray collection. You have seenThe Exorcist, but it is time to see it new again, and maybe catch some of that old feeling that crawled up the back of your neck the first time.
There is no special copy ofThe Exorcistin black and white. You have to do this manually. To viewThe Exorcistin black and white, you only need to turn the color off on your screen. When the movie begins, if you need, turn up the contrast so that the blacks are black. You want the priest’s black uniforms to be black. Now you are set.
Unless you watched aVHS copy in the 1980son a black and white television (yes, they still existed in the 80s), you have never seen the movie this way, and that is the whole point. Muting the colors, you will see the director’s and the cinematographer’s vision for values. You see the contrasts – you are made conscious of the lights and darks in the shot compositions. This movie was filmed by men who lived in two eras of cinema. They grew up in a time when most film was black and white, and when they became filmmakers, color film had advanced and taken over the industry.
Director ofThe Exorcist, William Friedkin, filmed his movies like black and white movies. Friedkin used colors, his films are not monochromatic, but he saw the visual need for attention to value contrast in composition. When he used color, he used it to make something mid-tone/gray pop in the eye – the teal gown of Regan, the red of the blood during the brightly-lit self-pleasuring scene, Regan’s yellow-green irises, and the green vomit – all of these are lost in black and white, but we gain something else; we get true black.
The presence of color has a psychological effect just as black and white does. The lack of color brings us into an ever-present twilight in black-and-white cinema. Dark surfaces, backgrounds, costuming, hair, eyes—they become black. The presence of black changes the gravity of the image in our subconscious. It is a feeling. It is atmosphere. It is temperature – colder.
Related:The Exorcist (1973): Explaining the Ending of One of the Scariest Horror Movies of All Time
Friedkin’s Inspirations
In the Shudder documentaryLeap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist, the director speaks briefly about his inspirations and his method of lighting actors. The director credits Caravaggio’s and Rembrandt’s paintings as inspirations for his lighting in his films. The painters’ figures are painted with dark or black backgrounds, and the subjects are lit from one direction with a strong light and lit on the opposite side by reflected light.
Friedkin describes his style of shooting actors, saying, “Light coming from one side, powerful foreground figures, and an either out of focus or black background. I will do that often unconsciously, and I know it’s related to my love of Caravaggio’s incredible figures.” Friedkin continues, turning to Rembrandt, “Rembrandt’s portraits have influenced cinematographers and directors forever, since the beginning of film. What he did basically was take one source light, so there is a very prominent and powerful light coming on a figure from one source, and the rest of the light on the face is a kind of soft bounce light from another surface that is not as strong as the hot source. And occasionally there will be a bit of backlight, but it’s not emphasized. That’s been the idea of the way I’ve tried to shoot faces.”
Friedkin says the iconic scene in which Father Lankaster Merrin arrives at the MacNeil house was inspired by a painting by Rene Magrite from 1950, titledThe Empire of Light. The painting is of a street in the gloom of dusk, when the sun has set but is reflecting off the sky, the trees and buildings are in shadow, a streetlamp is on, and its light bounces off the buildings.
As Friedkin filmed the scene, Merrin stands in silhouette beside the lamp post, also in silhouette, with its bulb glowing, and the interior lights from the house shine down through a fog on the priest. This scene is all about light and dark. The black figure of the priest, the lamp, and the gate are flattened and separated from the light from the house that hangs in the air.
The Trailer Originally Presented the Movie in Black and White
The original trailer for the 1973 filmfeatured 60 seconds of black-and-white flashes of Regan’s and the demon’s faces.The trailer was deemed too intense for usebecause the flashing could induce seizures. Watching it today, it is still a terrifying preview. This was how the film was intended to be introduced to audiences, with the black and white cuts. The black and white shots thematically rewind the film to the past of horror cinema.
The flashing faces appear in the film, but for very short cuts. During a dream sequence that Father Damien Karras has of his mother, a starkly painted, white face against a black background flashes for an instance. The white face of the demon later flashes over the face of Regan in the exorcism. As the lights flicker off, the white face appears in the dark. These flashes are of stronger contrast in black and white, and they look both more real and more surreal at the same time.
Related:20 Scariest Black and White Horror Movies of All Time
Bringing Out the Gothic
Black and white isthe palette of classic, gothic horrormovies based on old world monsters. Black and white takes us to the past, to a more innocent time, before America saw the darkness of the Vietnam War on their television screens, still in that unlying monochrome, and in that innocence, the monsters are more threatening. WatchingThe Exorcistin black and white lets you see it the way you see classics from the Golden Age.
Chris MacNeil is keeping a werewolf in Washington, locked in a bedroom in her home and tied to the bed. She is hiding her daughter, hiding what she has done, and hoping the public does not discover what has become of her. She knows Regan killed Burke Dennings, Chris lies to Detective Kinderman about Burke’s death, and she refuses to put Regan in a hospital where her true nature would be exposed.
Most of The Exorcist is set in a mundane, though upper-class home in Georgetown in DC. It is a normal urban location. It is not a castle or Victorian house far in the country, but the director draws out the gothic in the location. The house is surrounded by a gate with iron bars. We see this gate in stark black as Merrin arrives for the exorcism. Outside the house arethe iconic concrete steps that Karras falls downto his death at the end of the movie. Earlier in the film, we see Kinderman climb these stairs on his way to the MacNeil home, like a warlock climbing the steps of an ancient temple, to the top where some sacrifice is to be made to old gods.
The Exorcistopened up a new sub-genre of possession horror, but it is in itsmarrow a retelling of Dracula. Regan, like Lucy Westenra, is infected by this invading spirit that flies in through her bedroom window. She becomes a different person, and a group of men, in succession, come to the home to try to battle the demon – two doctors, a psychiatrist, a detective, and two priests.
