Brian De Palma
Carrie

Due to my age, I missed the theatrical release of "Carrie," which was renamed "Carrie, lo sguardo di Satana" in our country. However, through dictionaries and film magazines, I began to collect reviews and photos from the film. I was a child who preferred clippings from printed pages to playing soccer, and the face of Sissy Spacek, whom the press at the time described as "the plain diva," became etched in my mind indelibly, I can affirm today after so much time has passed. This year marks the film's fortieth anniversary; in 1976 it won the Avoriaz Horror Festival and earned Spacek her first Oscar nomination. When it finally aired on TV at the end of the '80s, I realized it was even better than I had imagined. What fascinated me about Carrie was her ability to be both anonymous and attractive within the same frame, fragile or unleashed, victim or executioner—she contained multitudes, to paraphrase Whitman, and the film seamlessly transitioned from comedy to horror. Some images I had on paper came to life and magnified their effect—one in particular, when the mother stabs Carrie in the back. The story is well-known: Carrie is bullied at school by her peers, invited to the final prom by the handsome college guy only to be pranked, and she takes revenge by unleashing psychokinetic powers that cause a massacre. The poster you see is one I had in my room for a long time, which I got from S.A.C. in Rome, a wonderful place where you could find original posters and placards from a multitude of films. I don't know if it still exists; perhaps it is only a place of memory now, but the film endures, even against the sequel which I refused to watch, and I hope it will be suitably celebrated this year!