'Exorcising the Exorcist'

Like the optical effect, this glance askance of Claude's Jules and Jim also tells a story that reverses, like a is also repeated later. Muriel has sent Claude a portion photo negative, the plot of Two English Girls. In this of her diary in which she confesses to an episode of way Truffaut reminds us that the experience recollected lesbianism and masturbation earlier in her life; and as here was an artistic experience to begin with, his own. Claude finishes reading her words, he turns to the cam- When he made Bed and Board a few years ago, era with a guilty look. Even the diary is a device cal- Truffaut finally brought to a conclusion the cycle of culated to remind us that it is only a re-creation, a Antoine Doinel films that had begun with his first work, recollection of experience rather than the experience The 400 Blows from a new point of view more sym- itself, which we are witnessing. Muriel's diary is one of pathetic to the adult than the child. The English Girls several such narr~itions that are part of Truffaut's nar- might be said to remake Jules and Jim with a compar- rative. Two others---one spoken by Truffaut himself and able change of heart. In 1962 Truffaut's sympathies another originating in Claude's letters to his mother-- lay with the Jeanne Moreau character, who is the freest are also voice-over contributions to the plot. But a spirit in Yules and Jim. In Two English Girls, however, fourth narration that figures in the film, a moot one of it is with Claude, the sanest, most stable corner of the sorts, is perhaps the most significant. It is a novel that triangle, that Truffaut's sympathies lie. It is a remark- Claude ultimately writes and publishes about his twenty- able thing for a director to have begun his own career year affair with his two English girls. all over again with such brilliance and vitality as Truffaut Claude's novel reverses the situation in his life: it is has shown in these last two films. Unlike sculpture, film about two men in love with the same woman. This of doesn't lend itself readily to the sort of stylization of course inserts yet another layer in the awareness of art gross reality that Truffaut has attempted in Two English that is here altering our perception of the story. The Girls. It is a remarkable thing at any point in a director's novel on which Two English Girls is based was written career to have performed so difficult a feat of art so by Henri-Pierre Roche, whose only other work, Jules well. and Jim, was made into a film by Truffaut ten years ago. COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR. an exchange ol views 'Exorcising the Exorcist' Rochester, N.Y. have three main objections to The ence that Blatty, the novelist, and Perhaps I will be judged insufficient- Exorcist: first, that it deals in pre- Schroth, the priest, are both trying to ly objective to counter Raymond Conciliar preoccupations and thought- reach. I think Blatty has read that Schroth's somewhat arch dismissal of patterns; second, that the events of audience better than Schroth has. The Exorcist [Commonweal, Nov. 3, the novel have nothing to do with the Surely, even at post-Conciliar Ford- 1972]. I am, truth to be told, in the evils of today; third, that the novel ham there are, even now, a few film version of the novel (Harper & does not offer a definite explanation priests who "still say Mass in Latin." Row, $6.95; Bantam, $1.25) and may for Karras' death. I live in a community of only 20 therefore be construed as blindly de- Father Schroth asserts that Blatty Jesuits and at least three of the 18 fending the star I've hitched my deals with a church purportedly in the say Mass in Latin--and every day at rickety wagon to. However, both Bill '70s but actually the church of the '40s that. Surely, even in the circles Father Blatty and Ray Schroth are my friends which, he presumes, no longer exists. Schroth frequents, there are still more and, s~nce they are bothmperhaps with- The actions and reactions of the than a few priests who swap "clerical out realizing--on the same side, it's novel's characters manifest a mind-set banter at . cocktail parties." God possible I might be a mediator. There which is unaffected by Vatican II. forgive me, I do. Finally, I realize that are few enough Christians who take This assertion, which I think is true of I come from the boonies outside The to the stump for what they believe, the characters, says less about Bill Big Apple, which encompasses 99 per and it would be a shame if they Blatty than it says of Father Sehroth's cent of the U.S., but I still "surprise wasted time hurling snide brickbats at apparent unfamiliarity with the mind- otherwise sophisticated people when one another when they could be off set of what may be a majority of to- (I) wear informal clothes." Since the on the quest for listeners to the Good day's Catholics. It is an error far summer, I've been to L.A., N.Y. and News. greater than misjudging the novel. It D.C., and in each place film stars, in- Father Schroth's article seems to is, sadly, a misjudgment of the audi- terviewers and just ordinary old sophis. 15 December 1972:252 ticated folk express surprise--pleased the susceptibilities of the faithful than I fear that Father Schroth may be surprise, I admit--when I turn up in his article demonstrates, but I don't cloaking himself in a Vatican II tri- turtleneck and sport coat. (Turtleneck? see much evidence of it. So, if Wil- umphalism as sterile as post-Tridentine Okay. Tie? Well .... ) Surely there are liam Peter Blatty uses "cheap sensa- triumphalism. Contrary to his supposi- even a , few becassocked Jesuits in tionalism" to hook such an audience tions, Vatican II has only touched the Father Schroth's own recreation room into considering the possibility of some surface of the People of God. One who put their heads together and tut- transcendent dimension to human life, cannot legislate a change in "presup. tut at the garb of their younger he may have found a "way in." Father positions and thought-patterns." Alas. brethren. "They're killing the Society Schroth may deride it, but the fact Many people come to God, as Augus- and the Church!" is that Blatty has made people think of tine did, through sin. As Merrin states To nit-pick these details seems silly, impalpable realities. This is no negligi- in the novel, "Perhaps evil is the cru- but I do so to demonstrate that Father ble achievement, even if it was reached cible of goodness .... And perhaps Schroth iust may be guilty of three by the cellar door. When all is said even Satan---Satan, in spite of himself repertorial sins--if that word is still and done, I suspect more people have --somehow serves to work out the will relevant: inadequate sampling of the read The Exorcist this year than have of God." Any door may serve. But feelings of the audience he serves, not ever read Commonweal. I weep for the one has to get people at least to con- keeping his ears open to opposing fact, but I don't ignore it. sider the ultimate option before they views, and thus, misjudging the recep- Father Schroth further suggests his can even apprehend the meaning of tivities of the audience he purports to aloofness from the majority of believ- what Father Schroth rightly calls the know. The People of God are by no ers (and unbelievers) when he laments core of Christianity: "the Lord and means identical to the college campus Blatty's failure to produce a work with Father revealed to us in the self-empty- or theological circles or the City of the subtlety of Henry James' The Turn ing love of Jesus." One must have New York. Obvious, but I wonder if o/ the Screw. Perhaps Father Schroth some suspicion of transcendent reality Father Schroth realizes that. does not watch television or go to the and theism before he can understand The majority of Christians I have movies or skim the best-seller lists, but that Jesus purported to be something met do not read Commonweal or The he can't possibly have failed to under- more than a social reformer. Critic. At best they read the diocesan stand that any novelist or screen- On another tack, Father Schroth says paper and perhaps the columns in writer today is writing for an audience that the prefaced allusions to Dachau, Time or Newsweek. They do not have far different from Henry James' or Wil- Communist torture and the Mafia much connection with the activities of liam Shakespeare's. When news com- "have no real connection with the rest their parishes other than Sunday Mass mentators have to get on the air im- of the novel." He then concludes by mwhich they still don't call "the mediately after a Presidential speech saying that The Exorcist reader Liturgy." And they mourn--very pri- and tell the people what it said, sub- "finishes as reassured as any good vately-the death of any sense of mys- tlety is not the avenue to any large citizen of seventeenth century Salem tery in the present homogenized lan- audience.

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