Little Regan is very weird. Her mother thinks it's a teenage thing, but the girl gets worse every day. The harsh reality is that the demon has possessed Regan. Two priests will try to free her from her. The Exorcist (1973) is William Friedkin's most celebrated film. The film scared, very scared, an entire generation, but it also achieved an unusual record in films of the genre: a rare quality that brought it a couple of Oscars and the Golden Globe for best drama.
When the success of The Exorcist arrived, Friedkin, who died yesterday at the age of 87 in Los Angeles, was already an old acquaintance of the Oscars. He had won the award for best film (and four more) two years earlier with The French connection (1971), one of the first films to delve into drug trafficking with Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider and Fernando Rey as protagonists. The French connection is considered one of the films with the best persecution scenes in the entire history of cinema.
That first Oscar came to Friedkin when he was only 36 years old. He had started as a director in the sixties on television shooting episodes of series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents or The Twilight Zone. His first opportunity on the big screen came with a musical Good Times (1967), which featured two big stars, Cher and her then-husband, Sonny Bono.
Following his first two big hits, The Exorcist, Friedkin's career declined. After the commercial failure of Cursed Burden in 1977, the director found himself relegated to shooting low-budget titles. He continued making movies and some documentaries, but his films no longer made it to the red carpet of the coveted Oscars.
His subsequent filmography includes titles such as Blue Chips, set in the world of basketball with Nick Nolte and Shaquille O'Neal, and Jade, a film from the femme fatale subgenre that had a certain resonance with Linda Fiorentino and Chazz Palminteri.
However, Friedkin by no means stayed at home, he combined his work as a filmmaker with a new profession, directing opera, which he began in 1996, and which brought him success and praise from some of the great singers such as Plácido Domingo.
The director was married four times and had another two long relationships. His first wife was the famous French actress Jeanne Moreau. Between 1982 and 1985 he was married to another well-known actress, the British Lesley-Anne Down, star of the television series Upstairs and Downstairs. The late filmmaker had two sons, Jackson and Cedric.
In an interview with La Vanguardia on the occasion of his participation in the 2017 Sitges Festival, Friedkin assured that he had not the slightest intention of retiring because "that would mean that I am dead." "I'm not afraid of death, only life scares me," concluded the filmmaker who frightened the generation of the seventies.
