Oscar Horrors: In (Mild) Defense of Linda Blair
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 4:00PM 
In Oscar Horrors, Team Film Experience explores Oscar nominated contributions to the horror genre. Here is new contributor Mayukh Sen.
HERE LIES...Linda Blair’s reasonably complex turn in The Exorcist, slain by the prodigious work of fellow pubescent Tatum O’Neal (Paper Moon).
Brian de Palma apparently hated The Exorcist, and it’s not difficult to see why. I generally fall on the unimpressed side with the film, because none of the psychological trauma undergone by the characters finds aesthetic articulation. Everything is so clearly, obviously constructed on a Hollywood set that it borders on the parodistic. What is superlative about a director like de Palma is that he understands the trappings of genre conventions and mocks the notion of film as a classically escapist, populist medium, managing to extract a modicum of truth out of such a framework. Friedkin doesn’t understand this. Interpreting what should be perfunctory entertainment as a parable of human suffering – that’s dreary city.
I won’t waste a second pretending Linda Blair’s performance is any great shakes. Her nomination was largely the product of inertia – The Exorcist (1973) was just a cultural phenomenon that the Academy couldn’t ignore, Dan. Yet reading Glenn’s wonderful piece on Sissy Spacek’s performance in Carrie made me realize the extent to which Blair’s performance has become underrated. Spacek’s performance is a masterpiece because of her fearless, but still graceful, physical expressivity. She is a performer who understands body language. The way she continually destructs, contorts, and fractures her body often acts as a reflection of the character’s emotional distress.
Somewhere along the line, it became fashionable to oversimplify Blair’s performance as a lot of “sitting there” caked with makeup. Those in defense of her performance often point to the luminosity of her earlier pre-possession scenes, rightly claiming that she is replete with youthful charm. I agree. She’s wonderful there, and she sets up a foundation for the supposed tragedy that occurs later in the film.
Beyond Mercedes McCambridge’s voice, plastic turning heads, body double controversies and other stunts that may not have much to do with acting talent, though, Blair’s work is solid. She demonstrates remarkable control over her facial expressions and body language, subtly communicating the “devil’s” continual torment, lack of patience, and frustration.
How does one externalize the psychological state of demonic possession? I’m not quite sure, but we can say that Linda Blair succeeded, to a degree. Her work is highly gestural but still controlled, and this degree of expressivity works wonders. I’ve noticed a tendency of certain critics to dismiss horror film performances as merely “acting scared” and “being terrified”. Though Blair’s performance is ultimately a cheap narrative trope, it shouldn’t be evaluated so lazily. I’m not a fan of praising performances because of the sheer amount of work put into them (see Meryl Streep’s string of performances in the 80s), but, in this case, the physical work is brutally effective. There is increasingly little appreciation for what actors communicate through physical gestures, and this might be part of why Linda Blair’s nomination is something of an afterthought these days.
Reader Comments (12)
Love this movie and like Blair's performance. LOVE Ellen Burstyn, though. She's the real anchor of the film. And how in the world did Max von Sydow not get an Oscar nom for this? I know compared to the others he may not have as much to do, but come on. "The power of Christ compels you!" didn't say itself, you know!
I understand that thanks to a deliberate act on Friedkin's part, Ellen Burstyn suffered back injuries on set that necessitated years of physical therapy - so I have no love for the man whatsoever. But this re-evaluation is very nicely done, Mayuhk, welcome to TFE! I hope we'll be seeing more from you.
This review is so extremely pretentious. Get over it de Palma fanboy.
I remember going to the movies with my parents to see something I've now forgotten, and there was a huge line for this new movie called "The Exorcist." We weren't in that line. My parents looked at the Exorcist line with disdain and told me that it was an evil movie that I should never watch. I was twelve. I stayed afraid of it for ten years ago and finally watched it on VHS and was terrified. Yes, now I can see ways that it is cheesy or overdone or whatever, but it's really hard to explain how much it was more than a movie. At least to me and my friends. It was something you saw if you dared, and it was a movie to quote with your friends when you wanted to be rebellious and bad. To this day I think of it as my horror movie touchstone. Which is to say, of course, that in spite of its apparent cinematic flaws, I love it.
Nate, explain what you mean by Streep's performances in the 80's.
med -- i didn't write this article. it was written by Mayukh. I assume he means that Streep's work in the 80s was very technically demanding (as even her giddiest fans would admit because those were huge difficult roles) but that technically complicated work doesn't necessarily mean that the performer is inspired.
I love Streep's work in the 80s myself (barring a couple of exceptions) because underneath the technical proficiency there was just so much soul.
I don't know how you cannot love Streep's string of performances in the 80's. She gave each role so much raw emotion and energy. Love La Streep...
My fave part of Blair's performance was when she was getting those tests done. Much more affecting then her (still stellar) work during possesion scenes.
"because none of the psychological trauma undergone by the characters finds aesthetic articulation."
I really didn't get this part. What do you mean?
I hate having the Supporting Actress category of that year brought up because while Tatum O'Neal is very good (however much Bogdanovich had a hand in her performing), her Supporting Actress win is a travesty on so many levels. The first of which is that she's clearly lead. However, the one that stings the most is that her costar Madeline Kahn was robbed for such a deliciously hilarious REAL supporting performance in the same film. And that was their best shot to reward her, basically, as her equally-if-not-more amazing turns in Clue, Young Frankenstein, What's Up, Doc? when unnoticed. The world is unfair.
I'm not crazy about The Exorcist -- save Burstyn and Max von Sydow's wonderful work, I think the film is a bit overrated -- but Linda Blair herself has quite a few handicaps that I'm not sure I can overlook. She's just decent otherwise. I don't get this BSA acclaim. But if she had done the voice, oh yeah. lol.
Really excellent write-up. It's a fun, if imperfect, performance to look at.
@Clark: Haha. Cute, but I'm actually not a huge de Palma fanboy – his filmography is so hit and miss but he's clearly a very intelligent director who understands mass entertainment and the use of film as an experimental medium, and Carrie is one of the times he really succeeded in showing that.
@timothy: The Exorcist really seemed like an event back in the day, which is why part of me thinks twice before I'm super harsh on it. I sometimes forget that maybe Friedkin was just establishing what we've come to see as conventions of the populist horror genre, so I can't necessarily fault him for not really "experimenting" with horror tropes.
@med: I love Streep and I'm a mild fan of some of her work in the 80s (Silkwood, Out of Africa – totally undervalued performance), but so much of it (Sophie's Choice, TFLW, Plenty) is studied, mannerism-laden work lacking idiosyncratic life. She is all technique and very little spirit, something I think she had IN SPADES in her '78-'79 run – The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, especially The Seduction of Joe Tynan.
@Gustavo: I mean to say that nothing Friedkin does stylistically really hints at what these characters are going through. (I have the same problem with John Carpenter.) I think this is what someone like, yeah, de Palma really excelled in with Carrie – with Carrie, you have things like that endless, dizzying 360 shot of her dancing with her prom date that communicates both how elated she is and the impending doom/tragedy of the situation at hand. I didn't feel that Friedkin allowed us to get close to any of the characters in this way. I didn't ever feel I was really in Ellen Burstyn's head seeing her lose her child. We just watch things happen – oh, look, her head is turning; oh, she waked down the stairs like a spider. That's cool enough, I guess, but the camera is so stationary. It's all shock effects.
@Mark: Madeline Kahn and PJ Johnson both give beautiful supporting performances in that film. I'm all about Candy Clark that year, though. She is so funny, touching, and especially subtle. MacKenzie Phillips was also brilliant in that film.
Thanks for your support, everyone! Means a lot to me. I'm super excited to be writing for TFE.