De Palma A La Mode

The New Hollywood movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s birthed a plethora of visionary and groundbreaking filmmakers. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and even a little-known director named Steven Spielberg all rose to prominence during this time, crafting films that not only managed to save the crumbling studio system, but also thrill audiences with films that were uniquely theirs. However, to me, among the “Film School 5”, Brian De Palma stands as the most interesting, especially in light of how De Palma’s legacy has evolved over time.

Unlike his contemporaries, De Palma was the wild card, an auteur who bounced between genres and ventures of varying commercial viability faster than a jackrabbit hopped up on speed. One needs to look no further than the 1974 release of the off the wall, Faust inspired Phantom of the Paradise being followed up by both Obsession and Carrie in 1976, two films that seem to be worlds apart from their predecessor. However, digging deeper, there is a stylistic undercurrent that pervades them. De Palma’s penchant for bright lighting shot with soft focus, voyeurist camera angles (both through POV shots and otherwise), and long takes can be found in all three of these films.

It’s De Palma’s versatility that makes his reputation within the industry all the more puzzling. These same stylistic concerns were a double-edged sword as far as De Palma’s critics were concerned. Any conversation about one of his suspense films, from Blow Out to Dressed to Kill to Body Double, inevitably raised the specter of Alfred Hitchcock and often resulted in labels like “hack” or “plagiarist” being bandied around.

However, I think that De Palma not only put a new spin on Hitchcock’s style, but also used it to create one that was uniquely his. To that end, I think that we can break down these parallels across three stylistic similarities between the two directors.

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#1) Voyeurism

Rear Window vs. Body Double. Vertigo vs Obsession. Psycho vs Dressed to Kill. Take your pick of one of De Palma’s thrillers and there’s going to be a pretty obvious Hitchcock riff going on. However, De Palma often takes Hitchcock’s voyeurist angles and POV shots and turns them around on themselves. For instance, take the iconic scene of Jake Scully following Gloria Revelle to the shopping mall in Body Double. For most of this sequence, we follow it from Jake’s perspective and the POV shots are from his eyes. However, when he’s spying on her from the storefront window, the camera switches perspective to the store’s cashier. From her perspective, we now see Jake on the other side of the glass. This is further enhanced through a quintessentially De Palma deep focus shot of the cashier in the closest plane and Jake in the distance. Now, we are no longer with the observer, but with the observed. Our perspective has changed and now Jake’s lustful peeping of Gloria in the changing room becomes more distasteful. The cashier’s perspective critiques Jake’s, and by extension De Palma’s and cinema’s, penchant for male gaze directed fantasies. Hitchcock, in contrast, very rarely left the voyeur’s perspective. Even the defining moment in Rear Window in which Thorwald finally catches Jeffries in the act of spying is still ultimately shot from Jeffries’ perspective. The criticism of the audience’s gaze is only momentary rather than sustained.

#2) Depiction of Women

Hitchcock’s relationship with women, both on and off screen, is well on record and his fondness for pretty blondes went beyond simple casting preferences. De Palma, as one would guess, followed that mold, frequently casting his one time wife Nancy Allen in several of his films and utilizing actresses like Melanie Griffith and Michelle Pfeiffer and placing them in perilous situations. However, unlike Hitchcock, I think De Palma gave his female characters a bit more to do than his detractors would give him credit for. While Nancy Allen’s characters in Blow Out and Dressed to Kill are not fully empowered by their respective films, they do aid the male heroes in solving the case. Her characters are frequently naive, yet are confident of their sexuality and believe in doing good. Holly Body in Body Double, even as a member of an industry frequently chastised as sexist and exploitative of women, clearly exercises control over those she works with and the film presents her as an independent women for the most part. The certifiably classic ending of Blow Out in which *SPOILERS* Jack uses Sally’s scream after her death in the movie is truly haunting. In what feels like a true indictment of the Hollywood machine, her last moments are memorialized in a cheap exploitation flick, a literal cry for help buried within a crass and shameless depiction of a woman being brutalized.

#3) Violence

On that note, claims of misogyny against De Palma were only rivaled by disgust toward his seemingly overindulgent scenes of violence. Hitchcock’s scenes of violence may seem tame today, but the iconic shower scene from Psycho or his penultimate film Frenzy were game changers when they came out. De Palma upped the ante, delivering brutal and uncompromising violence in films like Dressed to Kill and Body Double, which pushed the envelopes of what was deemed good taste in mainstream cinema. Once again, I think De Palma utilizes violence pioneered by Hitchcock to dig deeper into thematic undercurrents.

One example is the opening shower scene of Carrie. Obvious parallels to Psycho’s shower scene aside, the hazy lighting, slow motion, and somber music create a sense of euphoria and safety. However, as soon as the blood begins to flow, these three elements completely change. The lighting becomes flatter, the scene cuts more, and the music is gone completely. The warm isolation of the shower is now replaced with the cold reality of teen anxiety and puberty, the encroaching specter of change coming quickly and unexpectedly and the panic and confusion Carrie no doubt feels. Another great shot is the death of Gloria Revelle in Body Double. Utilizing a low angle shot, the scene is framed using the killers legs to divide the frame in thirds. In the center of the frame, we see Gloria cowering on the floor as the killer’s power drill hangs between his legs, creating an obvious phallic allegory and simultaneously suggesting the power relationship purely through the image. The sexual imagery only solidifies the killer’s “getting off” on the murder, and by extension, the audience’s titillation out of seeing bloodshed on screen.

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All of these narrative and technical obsessions became all the more solidified in my mind with my viewing of his offbeat 1979 film, Home Movies, and Noah Baumbach’s documentary, De Palma. From these, it’s clear that De Palma’s films reflect his own anxieties and life experiences on a truly personal level. For all of Hitchcock’s mastery of suspense, I think he was bested by De Palma in terms of giving his characters a sense of authorial reflection. Jake Scully, Jack Terry,  and even Tony Montana to a degree, are De Palma’s own psyche on-screen. They are voyeurs, loners, and even lunatics, and whether or not this ultimately casts De Palma in a positive light, I can’t say that it doesn’t feel like an honest exploration of a filmmaker’s psyche. While Scorsese and Coppola were busy tearing down the already faded veneer of post-Watergate America and Spielberg and Lucas were busy helming the special effects wizard’s guild, Brian De Palma was the self-reflector, a man desperately trying to come to terms with his past, but ultimately being drawn back to it with every film he made.