First off, thanks so much for writing one of your stellar reviews for this film. I've only seen some the Anchor Bay DVD release that came out a few years back & I have no idea how much integrity is lost in that cut. But it's remained in my mind as one of the best, smartest thrillers I've yet seen.
What I find so amazing about this film is the fact that I highly doubt it could have been made at any other time than it was. A decade or so previously, we would have seen something along the lines of a fantasy-tinged romance and a decade later this would have somehow morphed into a traditional slasher horror movie. In the 1950-60s, pagan themes and mythology would have been buried or crippled under a cloud of suspicion and socially conservative misdirection as to the veracity of "backward, heathen" religious practices. And extending into the eighties, the film would have been marred by a complete misunderstanding of pagan themes and mythology (bungled up as half "satanic-panic" and half pagan/druid/wiccan/psycho-hillbillies with enormous cleavage and bad teeth).
But in 1973, merely four years after the Summer of Love and in the wake of a renewed cultural consciousness of folk traditions and nature religions (and nature in general), the film's subject was foriegn enough to inspire curiousity (and thusly veiled fear), familiar enough not to distance mainstream viewers, and was not yet subject to the burden of authenticating itself with the religious communities it was (passingly) referencing. Unfortunately, the film would suffer today by the abundance of knowledge the 21st century has available in regard to these traditions - as some of the film's tension relies upon its audiences' basic lack or knowledge (or misunderstanding) of Summerisle's religion.
This is, of course, discounting the European and British common knowledge of many of the festivals and rituals performed and noted in the film (which is a bad idea, I recognize) - but appears allow the viewer in the 1970s remember that these activities and symbols are potent and rooted in a tradition which predates Christianity or their commonplace, pedestrian understanding of their importance.
Sorry, this isn't a great comment. But I did just want to point out that I felt that the success & potence of this film was greatly endebted to the zeitgiest of the era.
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What I find so amazing about this film is the fact that I highly doubt it could have been made at any other time than it was. A decade or so previously, we would have seen something along the lines of a fantasy-tinged romance and a decade later this would have somehow morphed into a traditional slasher horror movie. In the 1950-60s, pagan themes and mythology would have been buried or crippled under a cloud of suspicion and socially conservative misdirection as to the veracity of "backward, heathen" religious practices. And extending into the eighties, the film would have been marred by a complete misunderstanding of pagan themes and mythology (bungled up as half "satanic-panic" and half pagan/druid/wiccan/psycho-hillbillies with enormous cleavage and bad teeth).
But in 1973, merely four years after the Summer of Love and in the wake of a renewed cultural consciousness of folk traditions and nature religions (and nature in general), the film's subject was foriegn enough to inspire curiousity (and thusly veiled fear), familiar enough not to distance mainstream viewers, and was not yet subject to the burden of authenticating itself with the religious communities it was (passingly) referencing. Unfortunately, the film would suffer today by the abundance of knowledge the 21st century has available in regard to these traditions - as some of the film's tension relies upon its audiences' basic lack or knowledge (or misunderstanding) of Summerisle's religion.
This is, of course, discounting the European and British common knowledge of many of the festivals and rituals performed and noted in the film (which is a bad idea, I recognize) - but appears allow the viewer in the 1970s remember that these activities and symbols are potent and rooted in a tradition which predates Christianity or their commonplace, pedestrian understanding of their importance.
Sorry, this isn't a great comment. But I did just want to point out that I felt that the success & potence of this film was greatly endebted to the zeitgiest of the era.