31 October 1977. While Jack Delroy is confronted with the dizzying fall of the audience of his show, he intends to try a last blow to reverse the steam. The star host puts it all on the occasion of a paranormal evening that also marks his great return to the air after a painful break. But are we sure he's still leading the boat?
Believe him who can believe
With her silver skate, Late Night With The Devil immediately tries to transcribe this unique atmosphere of the Late Night Show typical of American night programmes. Broadcasted in the third part of the evening, the latter sequence sketches, live music and punch interviews in a tone alternating between relaxation and confidence. The orchestra comes to rhythm each moment of suspense by a drum bearing. The musicians punctuate the revelations and punchlines with a shot of timbales well placed, while the host plays the key role of conductor of the orchestra without which everything collapses. The public is also a full-fledged instrument of this carousel number, which we all know is based on panels. « Applause ».
Pure Entertainment to the American is decalated to the image, as if we were riveted ourselves in front of our cathodic tube, the 4:3 format in bonus. The whole set-up is based on a tacit pact with the spectator: what you are witnessing is nothing but the show that led to the most mysterious drama in the USA, as the announcement of a serious voice before the screen turns off to leave room for the program. Late Night With The Devil then appears on the screen, the operating visa and trading partners. Devilly effective.
To make us believe in the upcoming show, filmmakers Colin and Cameron Cairnes are full of ideas and go through a critical digression. The first is to have us integrate the troubled profile of the TV host. In just a few minutes of short sequences from a report about this personality of the showbizz, we discover its profile before the talkshow even begins. You can see his wife who died of cancer, the following shows that degenerate and his withdrawal from the media scene before his great return... on Halloween night.
In the background, one can guess the context of the increased tension of the 1970s, which broke the narrative of American hegemony. It is the camouflage of the Vietnam War, the oil shock, the murder of Charles Manson and the gradual erosion of a doubtful bloc in the cold war. « The violence that burns the sky » and the supposed rise of satanism as dramatizes the voice off. So much image conveyed through a small rectangular screen that will fascinate the entire planet until today according to the famous adage – and the biggest scam of the modern world – « If it's on TV, it must be true! ». A collective hallucination of an entire consumer-oriented society at all costs; propaganda like another.
These few minutes of context revealed by this off-rauque voice allow us to immerse ourselves gently. It is the image of the hypnotizer that proceeds with small touches of suggestions, almost like dInception So to speak. And then, after all, if we're here watching the DVD of the movie, it's already that we want to believe it, right? This is also what the host suggests from the outset. « What's wrong with wanting to believe in mystery? » Jack Delroy announcement, played by the excellent David Dastmalchian (Severance, Prisoners, Blade Runner 2049, Oppenheimer, Dune, etc.) and whose role appears to have been tailor-made for the polymorphic actor.
We'll be right back folks...
From time to time, even the image jumps to the screen, like a time not so far away where you had to move the antenna to better capture the signal. The first guest Christou then began to seek contact with the dead and members of the public. If the first attempts remain unsuccessful, the mentalist collapses and seems suddenly possessed. Exhausted, the man then regains his mind and Jack Delroy announces an advertising break, the serious look turned towards the camera. The guests follow each other, from the mentalist Christou to Ian Bliss, magician become skeptical and to a little girl very « Special ». « Like me, you're a liar, a cheat, a charlatan. » Assembles the repented to the unfortunate Christou, after his bancal number.
On the stage, the tension is palpable and one feels that the orchestra itself must sometimes play an improvised score to accompany the show and fill the inevitable moments of floating. Like the audience and the entire team, the spectator wonders about what he just saw? This process of questioning will be displayed throughout the film with brief black and white transitions (and large format) in the backstage of the set. Again, it's clever because we indirectly guess the tension that wins Jack, as if the show slipped his hands. What if it's true after all? At times, a brief stall of Jack Delroy's look behind the scenes, suggests that these black and white passages are authentic tapes that will come to document the event.
Worn by a very neat handwriting, Late Night With The Devil is a narrative jewel to the crescendo tension and where the spectator, necessarily dubitative, ends up being persuaded by the show. We would almost want to write that Debord warned us by this most famous thesis: « In a truly overthrown world, the true is a time of falsehood ». This commercial contract signed with the TV channel is nothing but a Faustian pact that irremediably brings the fate of all these television puppets to life.
A pact which is just as proposed to the spectator by the « truce of judgment » that necessarily implies any cinema experience. Contrary to the dream: we enter voluntarily, through this tacit contract in the narrative, and whoever plunges us into it can decide at any time to get us out of it through a process of distancing. This fraud This voluntary servitude to the scenographic device finds its climax during a large-scale hypnosis scene in the middle of the film where we are invited (like the public) to keep an eye on Ian Bliss's gosset watch. We contracted at the very moment when we launched the film by immediately giving up rationality for the benefit of the imagination. An original abyss that renews the logic of the found footage The story of extending Halloween in beauty!
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