Obsessed with the voyeur in all of us

DE PALMA (2016)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Reprinted with permission by Steel Notes Magazine

I don’t know if Brian De Palma is a visionary. I am not sure he is the Hitchcock copycat he has often been called, aping the visual style of Hitchcock’s own “Vertigo” and its female doppelganger subplot for most of his career. I never really considered De Palma a filmmaker who exploited women or was any sort of demented misogynist. Sure, an electric drill is thrust through a woman’s body dressed in lingerie in “Body Double.” Yes, a woman’s final scream in the throes of death is woven into the soundtrack of a film-within-the-film in “Blow Out.” Yes, Angie Dickinson’s character makes face with a scalpel in an elevator in “Dressed to Kill.” Then there is the honest depiction of a teenage girl with her period getting pelted with tampons in the famous opening scenes of “Carrie.” I still do not understand the misogyny charge any more than when it could have been applied to Hitchcock with Janet Leigh’s sudden demise in the infamous shower scene of “Psycho” or the numerous birds that attack Tippi Hedren and her perfectly coiffed hairdo in “The Birds” or, well, I could go on.

De Palma might have shown more empathy towards women overall. The Angie Dickinson character in “Dressed to Kill” is seen like a floating apparition in white, walking as if she was floating across the floors of the Museum of Modern Art in endless Steadicam takes. So much attention is divulged on her, from her lovemaking to her husband who abruptly takes off after finishing his business, to listening and talking to her son, to her seeing a therapist (Michael Caine) who admits he would make love to her. Then, very abruptly like Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane, she is taken from us and slashed to death. It ain’t pretty but by then, we love Angie, we feel for her and her revelation that she contracted a venereal disease. We care for her, unlike most of the slasher flicks of the 1980’s that could’ve been charged with misogyny more so than De Palma.

A new documentary called “De Palma” deals with some of these charges by film critics who always seem to sharpen their knives when a new film of his comes along. The director himself calls into question what Hollywood wanted from him and what they expected. I still don’t know if they knew what a talented, stylish director they had whose best films were like extended mood pieces that put you into a quixotic trance. Those long takes in an art museum (“Dressed to Kill”), a spacious, high-end mall (“Body Double” which features “the longest walk in film history” as De Palma claims) or the slow-motion, rhapsodic sense of movement and violence in a train station (“The Untouchables”) made me quiver with anticipation – they were dreams with a hypnotic charge of excitement. No other director before De Palma ever took the Steadicam shots and slow-motion to such a degree. They make standard issue mainstream entertainments seems positively underimagined by comparison.

Ultimately, as De Palma conveys through a personal story from his own youth, his best films are about obsessions. They are voyeuristic obsessions, usually with a woman as its focus. “Body Double” is one of the most pleasurably voyeuristic films of all time, taking a page from “Rear Window” and having its central protagonist getting excited over a woman seen through a telescope in ways that not even James Stewart ever had or would be permitted to. It is sexual excitement, not just some passing romantic notions. Same with “Dressed to Kill” as its main killer in a blonde wig and a black trenchcoat often appears looking through a window or a reflective surface before attacking or maiming a female victim. Yet there is another voyeuristic side to that film – Dickinson’s son (Keith Gordon) sets up a film camera outside of a psychiatrist’s house, hoping to catch the killer. De Palma himself tells the story of how he photographed his own father, outside of a residence, having an adulterous affair and confronting him with it. I would never have suspected that De Palma’s visual style and camera placement in “Dressed to Kill” was inspired by some troubling daddy issues.

De Palma speaks honestly about his cinematic triumphs and failures. He acknowledges that the vanity production “The Bonfire of the Vanities” works if you have not read the book (though I think the film fails whether you have read the book or not). He also acknowledges he was only the replacement director for the insidiously boring “Mission to Mars.” I also love his comments about making the most accessible film of his career, certainly the most popular, “Mission: Impossible,” and how he would’ve been dumb to turn down the opportunity to direct Tom Cruise in a feature film remake of the 60’s TV show. There is also the disaster of one of his earliest films and least known, “Get to Know Your Rabbit” with Tom Smothers that was heavily recut by the studio and had Orson Welles in the cast who didn’t memorize his lines. Oh, and how about Cliff Robertson’s tan coloring that didn’t mesh with a protagonist who was supposed to be pale-faced in the aptly-titled “Obsession.”

For myself, “Body Double,” “Femme Fatale” and “Dressed to Kill” are terrific voyeuristic classics – they are like peeks behind a curtain of sexual tension and women who are sexually knowing. “Scarface” and “Mission to Mars” are his worst films (Sorry Scarface fans but I still cannot get behind Al Pacino’s Cuban drug lord and how his story later connected with the hip-hop community). “The Untouchables” is a nostalgic entertainment with a great score and great performances that somehow ended a little too soon. “Mission: Impossible” is thin on plot but it has some captivating thrill-happy scenes. “Carrie” is atypical De Palma but it does show he had a gift for geeky horror with a sensitive performance by Sissy Spacek (and that final shot still gives me the chills). 

If there is anything missing in this otherwise captivating documentary, it is that De Palma (unlike some of his contemporaries like Martin Scorsese) never quite explains what drove him to make certain films. His most personal  works (“Body Double,” “Dressed to Kill,” “Femme Fatale,” “Blow Out”) seems to evolve from the feeling that life itself is often seen through a lens, a refracted lens perhaps, but one where all sorts of possible outcomes exist. That would be true of “Greetings” (his silliest film with hints of truth about the infamous Zapruder film) and its semi-sequel “Hi, Mom!” where Robert De Niro is the classic De Palma protagonist – a Vietnam vet who likes to photograph his neighbors.  The most telling aspect of De Palma’s work is that many of the characters are more attuned to their cameras and binoculars than they are to actual communication with their photographed subjects. When the male protagonists finally come around to having a conversation, it can work and result in some unexpected connection (“Femme Fatale” is one example, as is “Dressed to Kill”). When it doesn’t, tragedy and chaos result in an explosion of violence (“Carrie” being the most notable example, certainly “Blow Out”).  Either way, here’s hoping that this stunning documentary (directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow) results in Brian De Palma getting closer to being recognized as to what he always was – the artist obsessed with the voyeur in all of us.