Director: Brunello Rondi
Year: 1965
Country: Italy/France
Alternate Titles: The Demon
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Living in a remote village, a woman trying to fit in with the more traditionally-minded locals finds herself shunned for her beliefs and different lifestyle, eventually leading them to brand her a witch, and she tries to fight for her safety amidst their harsh treatment of her.
Review:
Overall, this is an immensely strong and impressive genre effort. Among the better features here is the rather strong notion of how the village life at the time starts to affect her and the various figures in her life. From the beginning, we’re given a harsh look at how the remoteness of the village and their closed-knit, immensely superstitious, and folklore that rules their lives, which creates a wholly imposing view towards the woman, creates a strong starting point here with plenty of sympathy towards her. The fact that she’s mostly in the wrong place at the wrong time is the biggest factor towards their feelings for her, as no matter how she tries to ingratiate herself with their more simple-minded customs and way of life, it turns out to be wrong and only makes the situation worse. That spurns a slew of vigorous and heated comments about what she really is and what’s going on that would cause the situation that ends up playing heavily into the superstitious nature of the region quite well.
With the established notion of her fate living in the village, the eventual mentality that reveals that they’re tormenting her as a witch is both hauntingly chilling and frustratingly logical. That makes the whole thing come together rather well with the belief in her condition that starts to impose itself into a few scenes involving the potential excuse of possession, from the feverish speaking in tongues, the crazed outbursts, and the body contortions into unnatural observations. This comes together to provide the motivation for everything to come together into some genuinely astute observations to help spawn the belief in her possession that requires the rest of the village to begin dealing with her in their form of superstitious tactics trying to cleanse her of the wickedness they perceive of her that puts this through a dry run for later films to come before leading into the other fun factors throughout here.
This is all handled well enough as it creates a fine sense of sympathy towards her for the way they treat her due to their close-minded viewpoints, making it so that she’s branded a witch and sentenced for her perceived crimes, but it also leads the film into its one lone issue here. The fact that it’s all so heavily leaning into the psychological mindset makes for the pacing to feel rather stiff and sluggish at times. Featuring far more scenes of her acting crazy around the villagers or the hunts that it’s all just in her mind with nothing happening. It’s all due to the repetitive nature of the scenes going back over and over on the same type of sequence involving the rest of the villagers upset with her over something that she had little control over, and the resulting fallout sends her spiraling into madness, which gets the point across initially before it’s hammered home so much that it becomes redundant at times. This is really the main issue to be had here, holding this one down.
Overview: ****.5/5
An immensely effective and likeable genre effort, this has a lot to like about it that manages to overwhelm a lot of the issues at stake, which aren’t that detrimental and don’t hold it back overall. Those with an interest in this style or who don’t mind the issues featured here will have a lot to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
This review is part of our ongoing series of reviews for Italian Horror Month, every November on the site:
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