The timing could not be better.
Today is Daliah Laví's 70th birthday and the 170th issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG, featuring my lengthy career interview with her, is arriving in the mailboxes of our subscribers all around the world right about now. One of the most important sections of the interview concerns Daliah's memories of making the film she considers her favorite, with her best performance: a little-known neorealist tragedy called IL DEMONIO ("The Demon"), directed by Fellini's assistant Brunello Rondi and based on the true story of a wild, romantically obsessed young peasant girl whose persistence transforms her into a kind of hellion, subsequently persecuted by her fellow villagers who assume her to be possessed by demons. This film, prophetic of THE EXORCIST in so many ways, was never released in America and, to my knowledge, never issued anywhere in English, so it concerned me to spend so many pages on a film that could not be widely seen by our readers.
But today my friend Jerry Lentz discovered that IL DEMONIO was available for viewing in its entirety on YouTube... with English subtitles! You can see it by clicking on this link.
We sent a copy of the link to Daliah as a birthday present, knowing that she'll be excited to share her best work with many friends who have never seen it. It certainly deserves a wider audience.
