In the middle of the year 2022, with cameras smaller than a shoebox recording aerial shots without compression and with 8K resolutions attached to small remote-controlled aircraft being the order of the day, we are more than used to impossible camera movements and logistical feats. several; but 50 years ago, climbing a simple ladder could be a real headache.
If I have started this text like this, it is because I am going to talk about one of the most spectacular plans of the extraordinary ‘The Exorcist’ which may not dazzle in terms of the content of the fragment itself, but which is a display of technique and ingenuity worthy of what, to this day, continues to be the best horror film of all time .
not so cutting edge technology
In this particular shot, the camera follows the characters from the moment they enter the hall of the house in which the film is set until they reach the door of Regan’s bedroom on the upper floor. This, simply described, can be anything but amazing todaybut at the beginning of the 70’s you had to pull your wits to be able to execute such an idea.
It should be remembered that ‘The Exorcist’ was released in 1973; three years before Garrett Brown’s steadicam debuted in the film ‘This land is my land’. Until then, despite the existence of some specific stabilizers, the only way to move the camera in a stable way was through the rails of a dolly and other systems that could not overcome the problem of the steps of a ladder.
How, then, did they manage to ascend to the girl’s—and Pazuzu’s—room? Cinematographer Owen Roizman, his team, and members of the art department designed a system for the occasion consisting of a series of rails located on top of the raised set at Burbank studios of Warner Brothers following the path of the stairs.
from them hung a structure similar to a swing in which the camera operator was seated and which moved by means of a system of pulleys and with the help of an assistant who directed the movement of the device. Thanks to this, stabilized tracking is achieved that, without being completely stable, is much more suitable than a simple handheld camera.
Of course, it is worth asking if all this was necessary and if it had not been more appropriate -at least at the budget level- a traditional coverage with static planes for a scene, a priori, so little transcendent. The answer, from my humble point of view —and obviously— is a resounding no.
The subtle vibration of the camera, hovering in the air like a presence that shouldn’t be there, coupled with Regan’s screaming in the background, creates a sense of restlessness and anticipation that enhances the subsequent revelation; piling up one more stone in the pyramid of horror and tension that is built during the footage of the film.
As you can see, technology is not everything, although having a comfortable budget to be able to experiment in this way helps a lot —’The Exorcist’ had about 12 million at the time, which is not bad at all. And if this has seemed interesting to you, another day we will talk at length about ‘I am Cuba’because what Mikhail Kalatozov and DOP Sergei Urusevsky achieved in 1964 is still something almost superhuman.