Il demonio

Her name, brilliantly chosen, is Purificazione: Purification. Scapegoated, slut-shamed, and viciously abused, Purif is arrestingly beautiful and sexually appetizing, uneducated and intelligent. Tormented, in a perpetual fever, she prowls her unadorned village and its windswept surroundings, armed with a cursed item, searching for the object of her desire, a lover soon to wed a more dominatable, well-behaved woman. Deeming her an envoy of unholy chaos, some of her neighbors want Purif killed, while more merciful souls seek to make her the subject of an exorcism. From its opening titles, which seem laid over burlap, and which feature Piero Piccioni’s score for piano, pipe organ, and spooky percussion that immediately accelerates, mimicking the respiration of someone gripped by fear, Il demonio (1963) is relentlessly bracing, coarse, anxiogenic, erotic, brutal, and transfixing.

Brunello Rondi had already established himself as a co-scenarist for Fellini when he made his solo directorial debut with this film ostensibly grounded in ethnological studies undertaken in Southern Italy. Inscribing his film with a beguiling balance of stark prurience and anthropological inquiry, Rondi dangles the question of agency, denying resolution. With the dogged mission to sabotage her lover’s wedding, is Purif innately malicious, mentally ill, or demonically possessed? The ambiguity concerning the supernatural is genuine: at one point, Purif apparently speaks with the ghost of a child who has just died. In another scene, Purif bends over backward and performs a spider walk, anticipating one of horror cinema history’s most iconic feats of contortion. Several puzzling transitions prompt us to question the reality of the proceeding scene. Over and over, Rondi has it both ways.

 Il demonio is rife with almost-documentary-like observations of rituals that bridge paganism and Catholicism: the village elders demon-proofing the newlyweds’ wedding chamber, the procession of flagellants and pilgrims carrying heavy stones, the exorcism process that involves placing a wiggling snake in front of Purif’s face and forcing her to her knees on a sheepskin rug. People scatter across a plane, holding scythes, shouting at clouds in the sky to go away. Every scene is underlined with urgency, pierced with pre-modern superstitious reverence.

Israeli actress Daliah Lavi’s career was predictably dictated by her seductive beauty, her large, dark eyes, her broad mouth and cheekbones, and she’s probably best remembered for her role in the original Casino Royale. But her Purif, who is flogged, yelled at, stoned, raped, and stabbed, yet remains undaunted throughout, is the result of some truly heroic and inventive acting. Immaculately attuned to the film’s tone, Lavi harnesses her character’s ferocity with a specificity and tenacity on par with Isabelle Adjani in Possession or Béatrice Dalle in Trouble Every Day. A very recent discovery for me, Il demonio is a revelation on multiple counts—and Lavi’s performance is certainly one of them. 🩸