Polish and American Horrors
William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) was the first film to use avant-garde sonoristic pieces in scenes of horror. Some of them were brief, nearly unrecognisable excerpts from Penderecki’s works. In Stanley Kubrick’s later The Shining we can hear Polymorphia, Utrenya, and The Awakening of Jacob. In Martin Scorsese’s thriller Shutter Island, it is the passacaglia from Symphony No. 3 that plays a key role. Years later Marcin Wrona used the Clarinet Quartet in his Demon, about a dybbuk that comes to a wedding, while David Lynch included the Threnody in an ‘atomic’ clip for the 3rd season of Twin Peaks.