Saturday | June 20, 2015 9:30 pm

The Demon
(Il demonio)

Directed by Brunello Rondi.
With Daliah Lavi, Frank Wolff, Anna Maria Aveta.
Italy/France, 1963, 35mm, black & white, 94 min.
Italian with English subtitles.

This extraordinary film is part character study, part horror movie, part ethnography. Set in the rural south of Italy, it tells the story of a young peasant woman who, distraught at the fact that her beloved has married another, puts a curse on him and flees into the forest. A series of events causes her village to blame her for its misfortune and to hunt her down. In the meantime, she begins to show signs of demonic possession. In the Sixties and Seventies, Rondi created a series of fascinating movies that bridge the gap between art cinema and Italy’s thriller and horror giallo genre. The Demon itself anticipates both The Devils and The Exorcist, and its deliriously spiritual rebel has been compared to the protagonists of both Ordet and Fists in the Pocket.