Films: 1970s
(1976) The Omen
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The Omen
Director: Richard Donner
Release: 1976
Politics and the American family are volatile ingredients swirling towards explosion in director Richard Donner's 1976 'The Omen.'
The film opens in Rome, where American ambassador Robert Thorn's wife loses her baby. Before she can awake to the horrific news, Thorn (Gregory Peck) is convinced by Father Spiletto (Martin Benson) to substitute the perished child for a healthy boy whose mother died giving birth at the same hour.
What follows is a journey into evil.
Thorn's child Damien grows. Thorn is promoted " becoming the new ambassador to England.
His quiet and affectionate boy, however, attracts an orbit of suicidal nannies, murderous animals, and priests desperate to convince Thorn something is terribly amiss. Why can't Damien approach a church without a seizure-level tantrum? From where do the hulking Rottweilers appearing on Thorn's doorstep come?
Besieged by these elements, Thorn observes his wife (Lee Remick) increasingly forced out of Damien's world by his newest 'agency' caretaker (Billie Whitelaw as Mrs. Baylock). Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Thorn is brutally injured in their home.
A priest, Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), strives to communicate the truth to Thorn " that Damien is an agent of dark forces and must be killed to save the world.
Photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) is drawn to this struggle. His images show odd blemishes and marks that presage the deaths of Damien's first nanny and, eventually, Brennan.
The evidence of supernatural power insurmountable, Thorn and Jennings follow Brennan's trail back to Italy, where the nature of Damien's mother, father and fate of mankind are discovered. Thorn must return to England to stop his son's Satanic destiny. It is a decision that comes with a tremendous price.
Intertwined with all of the mystical and malevolent forces in 'The Omen' are politics.
Thorn's ascent to Ambassador to the Court of St. James is directly connected to his illicit adoption of Damien. Predicated upon a lie, his new and temporary family happiness sinisterly dovetails with his career improvement.
Thorn's bliss, however, is a machination.
Satan, in 'The Omen,' wants his son on Earth to advance through the ranks of the powerful and the elite. The mechanism is Thorn. The son of the ambassador is meant to achieve even higher office in his lifetime, it is presumed. History, interestingly, tells us this is so.
The story of the Thorn's is a dark mirror of the pre-presidential Kennedys - thee parallel between Thorn and Joseph P. Kennedy a fleeting, but important mirror image.
Barely two decades years before, the sons of the real life charismatic and strong-headed American ambassador to England achieved significant power in the United States and the world " with Joseph's son John taking the presidency, Edward becoming a senator and Robert almost achieving a presidency of his own.
This advent of Catholic men in American politics was unprecedented. 'The Omen' twists the historical importance of the phenomenon, suggesting not humanitarian and egalitarian politics from the next generation of influential Western sons, but Hell on Earth.
Perhaps that's what the English and Protestant America thought.
The ambassador, a headstrong and outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in World War II, mortified London newspaper editors and American leaders. He may well have seemed the voice of the Antichrist at the time.
And when Robert Thorn is dead, Damien is taken into the custody of none other than the United States president. In the film's final -- and one of its most effective " scenes, Damien looks directly into the camera and smiles, holding the hand of the most powerful man on the planet, his new ward.
The omen, then is not a star in the sky, or the people of Zion returning to their rightful home. The omen is Damien the child, and it is an omen for the audience. The sons of the powerful shall inherit power. And in the fashion they were raised, so they shall behave.
Damien was raised in the hands of the Devil. His parents effectively expelled by the destructive and malignant agents in his home, the future is out of the control of Robert Thorn and his wife. They lose their chance to raise a productive and moral being, Thorn's act of deception in the beginning fuels his family's decay and ultimate destruction.
And this is the underlying message: we are responsible for who (and what) we let into our homes. The things
that push and prod our children, the amount of responsibility we abdicate to others, is a bill that inevitably comes due. Thorn's bill is so great that he must destroy the monstrosity he has allowed to grow under his own roof. And, in line with the theme of omens, that decision prompts a vision of the police-state Damien may bring to bear when he presumably grows to inherit his birthright.
Donner's 'The Omen' is at times masterfully shot. The film features two mind-boggling sequences " Remick's fall from a balcony and Warner's decapitation. They resemble nothing less than Hitchcock in their intensity and effectiveness.
On the other hand, the film is less than convincing when Donner employs sets. Rome and the English countryside bring the film to life, but the hokey-looking cemetery where Thorn and Jennings discover the truth of Damien's birth is awful, resembling (and not in a positive way) a Hammer Studios' production: flimsy headstones, fan generated winds, and toggle-switch lightning.
Nor does the script always work. Father Brennan's dialogue is overwrought, sometimes silly. His little poem about the Antichrist, supposedly from the Bible, is clearly not from Scripture. It sounds more like something cribbed from Universal's horror handbook " a la Maleva in 'The Wolf Man.'
Donner has created a gigantic concept piece which when it works is a mighty success.
'The Omen' drags Satanism out of the bedroom and into the pale gray English daylight.
In its flaws, it falls from great heights, landing far above the dregs of the genre.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
The Omen, 1976
On the other hand, the film is less than convincing when Donner employs sets. Rome and the English countryside bring the film to life, but the hokey-looking cemetery where Thorn and Jennings discover the truth of Damien's birth is awful, resembling (and not in a positive way) a Hammer Studios' production: flimsy headstones, fan generated winds, and toggle-switch lightning.
