Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Redacted

Redacted (2007)

So we have caught up with Brian De Palma's body of work. Redacted goes back to a lot of the same territory as 1989's Casualties of War. We have American troops in a foreign land and the sexual violation of a native girl is the crux of the conflict. There's one soldier who above all the rest is still virtuous. This was one was written by De Palma as well and really shows off his weakness as a writer. However, there are some interesting technical elements to the picture, and it really easy very experimental for De Palma, both in its making and the distribution.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - The Black Dahlia

The Black Dahlia (2006)
Starring Josh Harnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner, Mike Starr, Fiona Shaw, Rachel Miner

Coming off of the Euro Noir Femme Fatale, De Palma steps right into classic L.A. Noir, where the entire bleak genre really began. The film is based on the James Ellroy novel, which is in turn based on the real life murder of a young wanna be actress named Elizabeth Short, nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" by the newspapers. For the picture, we find De Palma restrained much more than in Femme Fatale. I didn't notice too many visual flourishes, instead a lot of post-production gauziness added to the film in an attempt to make the film resemble its counterparts in the 1940s. He manages to directly reference old movies, a trademark of De Palma's love of cinema. It's a long picture, over two hours and there are many sub plots and third act twists. So how does it all come together?

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Femme Fatale

Femme Fatale (2002)
Starring Rebecca Romijn, Antonio Banderas, Peter Coyote, Eriq Ebouaney

De Palma came off of Snake Eyes and went in a total 180 to make Mission to Mars. I don't think any one could have really predicted that film from him: A science fiction film set in the future involving a rescue mission to Mars with aliens and special effects and so on. It was definitely a risky move on his part, and ultimately it failed. There were moments that worked, in particular a planetfall sequence involving risky maneuvers using a deep knowledge of gravity and physics. It had a lot of tension in and drew me in, but overall the film was a mess. So for his second film of the 21st century, De Palma revisited some Hitchcock elements, but more he dipped fulling into the Noir genre, something he had skirted his entire career but never gone full bore into.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Snake Eyes

Snake Eyes (1998)
Starring Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, Carla Gugino, Stan Shaw, John Heard, Luis Guzman

In the wake of Carlito's Way, De Palma was back on top and directed the very commercial Mission: Impossible. It was definitely a big break both for the director and in establishing Tom Cruise as an action star. It was also not very De Palma-esque, especially due to its globe trotting nature. Most De Palma films work because of their very small and local nature, so having character moving from Europe to Langley, Virginia between scenes was a bit jarring for those expecting a film more true to the director's aesthetic. It was an enjoyable movie though, but it was Snake Eyes that was set to stand as a return to the paranoid thrillers De Palma made in the 1980s (Body Double, Blow Out).

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Carlito's Way

Carlito's Way (1993)
Starring Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, Luis Guzman, John Leguizamo, Viggo Mortensen

In the wake of Bonfire of the Vanities, De Palma returned to Hitchcock-land with Raising Cain, an odd film about twins and multiple personalities that in many ways hearkened back to Sisters. It was another failure for the director, albeit not as quite a large scale one as Bonfire. With a sense of humility about him, De Palma embarked on adapting a novel by a federal judge called After Hours. The film would be renamed Carlito's Way (to distinguish it from Scorsese's After Hours) and would return De Palma to some themes and ideas from Scarface. However, instead of the rise and fall of a crimelord who is brash and aggressive, Carlito's would tell the story of a man once neck deep in crime, now trying to work his way out and go legit.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - The Bonfire of the Vanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Starring Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis, Kim Catrall, Morgan Freeman, Saul Rubinek, F. Murray Abraham

And so, all great filmmakers must descend into the bowels of hell from time to time. It's hard for us to understand just how terrible this film is now. Oh yes, Hanks is certainly acting in a way that comes across as acting. And Willis is forced to deliver voice over narration that both shoves the story forward and sounds like he has difficulty saying it. But the utter disaster that is The Bonfire of the Vanities was both as a completed picture and the behind the scenes production fiasco. What was thrown up on the screen was a watered down version of a biting satire, that somehow manages to still offend every major racial group and still feel like the studio was pulling back and watering it down.

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - Casualties of War

Casualties of War (1989)
Starring Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, John C. Reilly, John Leguizamo, Don Harvey, Thuy Thu Le

Coppola made Apocalypse Now. Stone made Platoon. And De Palma made Casualties of War. At the end of the 1980s De Palma was secure in his place as a Hollywood film director. When he had been closing out the 1970s he was still immersed in Hitchcoclk style thrillers. A decade later he's made a gangster epic (Scarface), a 1930s historical crime film (The Untouchables), and a Vietnam War flick. Despite the change in venue and content, there are the same cinematographic trademarks (deep focus and POV tracking shot). But how does this film shape up next to the other great Vietnam War flicks?

Director in Focus: Brian De Palma - The Untouchables

The Untouchables (1987, dir. Brian de Palma)
Starring Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert DeNiro, Andy Garcia, Charles Martin Smith, Patricia Clarkson, Billy Drago

If someone told me Sisters and Carrie were made by the same director, it would sound plausible. If someone told me Carrie and The Untouchables were made by the same director I would definitely question the validity of that statement. At this point in his career, this was de Palma's most "Hollywood" film. Its based on actual events, though highly dramatized for the screen and has the sort of "sweeping" nature you expect from movies vying for an Oscar nod. The story is an interesting one and de Palma is allowed to use some of his cinematographic trademarks along the way.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Body Double

Body Double (1984)
Starring Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton

This film wouldn't exist if it weren't for Vertigo and Rear Window. Once again, de Palma returns to his filmmaking mentor, Alfred Hitchcock to inform his own work. However, coming off of the stylistically redefining Scarface, Body Double feels like a Cinemax softcore porn with a creative cinematographer's flourish lain over the top. For all the moviemaking love put into this film there's just something off about it the whole time that taints it from living up to de Palma's previous Hitchcock homages.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Scarface

Scarface (1983)
Starring Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfieffer, Robert Loggia, F. Murray Abraham, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio

Certain films permeate the pop culture consciousness so deeply that you never have to see them to know them. I was 13 and watching an episode of The Simpsons where Homer ends up in possession of a large pile of sugar. He becomes power hungry as the episode progresses and at one point says. "First you get the sugar. Then you get the money. Then you get...the women." At the time I found the line hilarious and filed it away as simply something those clever Simpsons writers came up with. Years later I would learn it was reference to Brian De Palma's trend setting foray into big budget Hollywood movies.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Blow Out

Blow Out (1981)
Starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz

Alfred Hitchcock passed away in 1980 and with him ended De Palma's rather blatant homage/ripoffs of his work. With Blow Out, De Palma attempted an American remake of Italian director Michaelangelo Antonioni's 1966 Blowup. The picture leans much more in the direction of the big Hollywood pictures De Palma would go on to make in the 1980s and 1990s, yet it also marks his move away from the psycho thriller. Here the murders going on are linked to political conspiracy, not a mentally disturbed individual working on their own, though the murderer is definitely mentally disturbed.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Dressed to Kill

Dressed to Kill (1980)
Starring Angie Dickinson, Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz, Keith Gordon

I have said it many times about de Palma already, but the man was obsessed with emulating Hitchcock. Here in his blatant nod to Psycho, we have a film that stays above water simply because of its stylistic flourishes. While much more entertaining and better at keeping my attention than Obsession, it lacks some of the depth of a picture like Sisters or Carrie. And there are moments that trend uncomfortably into homophobic territory as well as scenes that could be interpreted as heavily misogynistic. While I don't think De Palma hates women (they feature heavily in all the features I've seen so far), I do think is highly attuned to the traditional portrayal of women in cinema as constant victims.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Obsession

Obsession (1976)
Starring Cliff Robertson, Genevieve Bujold, John Lithgow

Throughout his early career, de Palma was either referred to as a director who made homages to Hitchcock, or was blatantly ripping the master director of thrillers off. And its a very fine line de Palma walks, particularly in this melodrama that is an obvious reference to both Rebecca and Vertigo. In fact, Hitchcock himself was reportedly furious that de Palma's Obsession was so incredibly close to Rebecca. And its interesting to note that Hitch's trademark composer, Bernard Herrmann, once again composes the score to a de Palma thriller. So how does this furiously melodramatic Hitchcock knock-off stack up?

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Sisters

Sisters (1973)
Starring Margot Kidder, Jennifer Salt, Charles Durning, William Finley

Sisters is director De Palma standing up and yelling, "I love Hitchcock!". He got Bernard Hermann, Hitch's composer and most famous for the the slashing string crescendo of Psycho, he gives us murder enigmatically glimpsed from an apartment window, he gives us crazy camera tricks such as split screen wherein figures meet between both views, and many more flourishes that express his admiration for the great suspense director that Hitchcock was. And this film is as disturbing, if not more than Hitch at his most macabre.

Director in Focus: Brian DePalma - Carrie

Some pre-conceived notions about Brian DePalma: Before I get into the review of this first picture in the DePalma series, I will address some ideas I have about this director. Of Mr. DePalma's films I have seen are Phantom of the Paradise, Raising Cain, Mission: Impossible, and Mission to Mars. I wouldn't say DePalma is a director I actively dislike, I just have never been overly impressed with him. Without further ado, my first review:

Carrie (1976)
Starring Sissy Spacek, Amy Irving, Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, Nancy Allen, John Travolta, William Katt, Edie McClure, PJ Soles

I was homeschooled through my entire elementary, middle, and high school grades. So, I was never subject to the sort of direct bullying I've seen in countless films and television shows. I definitely was raised in a sporadically religious home and was a quiet kid, so I felt some connections to the character of Carrie White. My ideas about this film from its osmosis into popular culture was that Carrie is a "weirdo" character. I found myself pleasantly surprised by the depth actually brought to her in the film.

Director in Focus - New Director Poll Results

So the vote for my next Director in Focus is complete and the results are as follows:

Francois Ozon - 9%
Claire Denis - 18%
Pier Pasolini - 27%
Brian DePalma - 45%

So Brian DePalma it is! The April schedule looks as follows:
April 3rd - Carrie
April 10th - The Fury
April 17th - Sisters
April 24th - Dressed to Kill